Somehow, the original blog post I'd made for this entry was corrupted and replaced with another post dealing with an entirely different topic. I had no choice but to delete that and start again but not remembering word-for word what I'd previously written and having in the interim discovered things I hadn't known when I wrote the the article for the first time, I decided instead to simply re-write it.
The story begins in 1968, when I was six years old and my father took me along on one of his assignments, which was to shoot photos of a provincial shooting competition that was being held between members of all three branches of the Cadet Movement, plus members of the Boy Scouts of Canada. The competition was held in the Cote-des Neiges Armoury. The story ends with my unexpectedly being assigned to shoot the same organization (cadet movement) engaged in the same activity (shooting competition) in the same physical space (floor of the riding rink) in the same building (CDN Armoury) 45 years later, (March 2013.) I carried the memory of the event albeit a very fragmentary way for 45 years. Notwithstanding, the memories I carried, turned out to be very accurate, with the only inaccuracy being that I had believed for decades that the event took place in 1967, though the photographic evidence, once the negatives were dug up and digitized proves the event took place in the late winter or early spring of 1968. Still, this was before the first manned Apollo launch, before the Beatles broke up, before Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, and before the 2nd Field Regiment moved into the Armoury. 
In those days, cadets shot Lee-Enfield No7 .22 training rifles and to facilitate large numbers of people competing at once, a temporary backstop of angled steel plates supported by a wooden frame would be set up at the back of the armoury, up against the back wall. This was before the structures housing the 7th Bty offices or the classrooms at the very back of the building were built. Those who don't believe that live ammo was used on the floor of the armoury need only look at the photos, though it's hard to imagine this sort of thing being allowed today.
On March 16th of this year, the cadet movement as having another shooting competition. 3BAM on the other hand, had a very busy weekend as it would support the cadets on the 16th by firing a starting gun for the competition, then feeding them a hot-dog lunch, while maintaining and preparing the guns and vehicles for the next day's participation in the St-Patrick's day parade. My plan for the day had been to shoot some video of the starting gun for inclusion in a later, as yet undetermined video project before shooting a few stills of the preparation for the parade. I was still recovering from a very nasty throat infection that had plagued me for weeks and wanted to make a short day of it, particularly since the next day was to be a long one and the weather forecast was for a very cold day. Our Sunray, CWO (ret) Gilles Aubé was a bit late in arriving and so I waited for him in the stands near the cadet offices along with Lcol (ret) Yvon Bégin and Gnr André Coulombe 
of 3BAM. We immediately noticed that a shooting range of sorts had been set up on the parade square, though we were quite puzzled as the backstops were way to flimsy to stop even a .22 bullet and to boot, the stands were right behind the range. I was still believing at this point, albeit completely incorrectly that cadets were still shooting.22 caliber rifles and that the shooting would take place inside the armoury's indoor range. I knew it had been condemned in 1991, but figured that in the interim, they might have fixed the ventilation problems. In fact, as I was shortly to discover, cadets today use Daisy air rifles, not Lee-Enfield No7 rifles, so the backstops don't have to be all that heavy and there are no safety issues firing on the parade square.
When Gilles showed up a few minutes later, he informed us first that there would be no starting gun this day as an unforeseen problem had made it impossible for our artificer and driver, WO (ret) Gilles Pelletier to attend, and so he asked me if I could
shoot photos of the cadet shooting match instead. Gilles had no idea, nor I think did anybody else really, but the reality that I was about to repeat the very same assignment my father had in this same building 45 years earlier--the assignment that brought me to this very spot for the first time in my life-- hit me on the head like a 16 ton weight. This was beginning to look and feel an awful lot like an episode of the "The Twilight Zone." In fact, I could almost hear Rod Serling's voice in the back of my head, tugging at my subconscious.
"Our lives are like projectiles, moving through time and space on constantly changing trajectories. Each and every other trajectory that randomly intersects our own affects it and alters its direction, often in unpredictable new directions. Directions that sometimes lead us right back to the point of origin; back to the Twilight Zone."
shoot photos of the cadet shooting match instead. Gilles had no idea, nor I think did anybody else really, but the reality that I was about to repeat the very same assignment my father had in this same building 45 years earlier--the assignment that brought me to this very spot for the first time in my life-- hit me on the head like a 16 ton weight. This was beginning to look and feel an awful lot like an episode of the "The Twilight Zone." In fact, I could almost hear Rod Serling's voice in the back of my head, tugging at my subconscious."Our lives are like projectiles, moving through time and space on constantly changing trajectories. Each and every other trajectory that randomly intersects our own affects it and alters its direction, often in unpredictable new directions. Directions that sometimes lead us right back to the point of origin; back to the Twilight Zone."
From this point on, it was as much an exercise in determinism as it was in photography. Even the motto of the Army Cadets, "Acer Acerpori" (As the maple, so the sapling) fit this Serlingesque story with creepy perfection. For those who don't know me or don't know me well, you might find it interesting that I had never in my father's lifetime planned to take up photography and only did so after his death in 1998. I also spent more than 20 years avoiding CDN armoury after leaving the regiment in 1991 and only discovered the existence of 3BAM as a result of an interesting coincidence. Nor did I initially have any plans to get involved with 3BAM as a photographer or in any other capacity. 
Some things were of course different from one shoot to the other. I shot the photos with a state of the art 36MP Nikon D800 camera and a fabulous 24-70mm f.2.8G lens; technology that couldn't be dreamed of in 1968. It was no problem for me to crank the ISO up to 1600 for some shots and still have very clean, relatively noise-free photos. My father by contrast, shot his photos with a 1948 vintage Graflex Crown Graphic press camera, (with a different flash than the one seen in the picture). His camera was already 20 years old at the time and worked off a film magazine that held a total of six 4 x 5" negatives that had to be manually advanced between shots, while the shutter had to be manually cocked between each shot as well. These were not fast cameras to use, though once upon a time, it's what all the press photographers in North America carried. The only lens was a 127mm (wide angle in this format) Kodak Ektar f.3.7 which lets in just over half as much light as my 24-70mm. Probably the highest speed film available back then was 400 ASA (what they used to call ISO), which was nowhere nearly fast enough, and so it had to be underexposed during the shoot and then overdeveloped by a good two stops in the darkroom after the shoot. The graininess of the images attests to the push-processing to at least 1600ASA. This also explains why he chose to shoot the photos with the old Graflex clunker instead of one of his Nikon 35mm's or one of his Rolleiflex medium format cameras. Using either of those formats at those film speeds would have only magnified the graininess of the images whereas with the large format camera, he still got some passable images. I'm also sure the reason there's so much more motion blur in his photos than mine is that my lens is almost twice as fast as his. The one thing that's depressing in all of this is that his camera, though dated, was still useful 20 years after being introduced while 20 years from now, my beloved D800 will long have been consigned to the junk-heap of obsolescent electronics. 
In closing, I'm told the cadets from the Black Watch won the competition this March 16th. I don't know who won in 1968, whether it was done by team or part of the selection process for the annual Bisley matches that were held every year in England and in which we sent teams to participate, but I do know from the kilted figure that can be made out when the opening photo in this post is blown up, that the Black Watch participated, so it's not impossible they won back then too. Wouldn't it be completely freaky if they did?
Ubique!
Gary Menten
Photographer
