When CFSME moved to Gagtown, RETS moved from the Vedder floodplain to mosquito central out by the water tower. All around tent city was/is a beautiful coniferous forest where lots of extra-curricular activities could take place. I can't really remember how I got in trouble in the first place, but my partner and I were confined to base for the weekend.
As EVERYONE knows, there is still a bar ON base, which we thought would do just fine. So while everyone else was out on weekend leave, the two of us put on our best threads and walked down to the Canex. As the troop WO drove by with a slight look of shock on his face, we smiled really big and waved, and of course proceeded to have a great weekend anyhow.
Trouble began when we were both bridge commanders building NSB's outside the officers mess, and were hauled off the bridge site into the office. "I KNOW I said confined to base..." Our thinking was confined to base meant no Sweetwater, whereas his version was confined to tent lines. Anyhow, confined to tentlines for the remainder of course, extra duties, ya ya ya.
Those newfies - nothing separates them from beer and poutine. They showed us how to get the cabbie to bring beer TO us! To keep ourselves occupied, I decided to do a project. We 'borrowed' a log from RAWA used for borehole drilling, and put it in the forest, and proceeded to engineer it up a bit with flag colours and CHIMO in each colour section. One case of beer, one coat of paint, every night for a week. I sent a shopping list out with the others and got everybody ready for the last night.
Course party night - after the "out of the goodness of my heart" speech (plus cleaning shitters for three weekends straight) we rock up, have a bit of fun, then take all the candidates back to tent lines. We put the block and tackle lectures, the knots and lashings lectures, and the swiss seat lectures, plus all the push-ups lectures to good use that night. I climbed up the tower, shimmied across the girder to one of the outside support columns, rigged up a pulley, and sent it back down to the boys. After lots of tugging, we raised it so that the log was in the middle of the diamond formed by the braces, and tied it off. I really don't know what happened next for sure as we all caught taxis at 3 or 4 in the morning and went back across the country, but I was told it stayed there for a few days, until heavy equipment came down from Quebec and pulled it down. It was by the abolutions block 3 years later though.