There's quite a change taking place at the old home of the 30th Field Artillery Regiment RCA at Dow's Lake. With the move of the Bytown Gunners to Uplands, the Navy has begun the construction of a 'Stone Frigate' for HMCS Carleton. I've just received a few photographs of the steel that has been installed so far. In addition, I've also taken a screen shot from Google Maps of their latest view of the site. It's rather fascinating how fast Google Maps updates some of their locations!

9 May 2014 - The government has released their plans to mark the end of our country’s military mission in Afghanistan. There will be a national ceremony on Parliament Hill that will pay tribute to the fallen, the sacrifices of the wounded, and the special burden borne by families. Further details can be viewed on the linked website.

Thursday, 22 May 2014 - Have you marked your calendar for this event? Best chance of the year to get together with your fellow Gunners! Find out what's happened over the last year. Discuss plans for the summer and next year. Talk to your buddies. Let's see if we can fill up the Army Officers' Mess with Gunners! Invitations should be in the mail shortly.
Are you a Facebook user? You can go to our Facebook page and indicate your attendance there! (Like the page at the same time!)
You can also indicate your attendance in the comment option below.

Name – Dennis R. (Doc) Hopper, CD
Retired Rank - Lieutenant-Colonel
Honours - Canadian Forces Decoration with 2  Clasps
Artillery Units Served - 4th Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery,  1 Locating Battery RCA,  5ème Régiment d'artillerie légère du Canada, 2nd Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, Directorate of Land Requirements
Artillery worked on - 105 mm Howitzer  C1A1, 155 mm Howitzer M1A1, 4.2 in Mortar, 105 mm Howitzer L5, CL-89 Drone,  Sound Ranging systems, Counter Mortar Radar, Blowpipe/Javelin AD missiles, US FAADS system (incl Sgt York), CF Low Level Air Defence system (Skyguard, ADATS, GDF-005 35 mm)
Enrolled: - 11 September 1963
Retired (First Time) - September 1995
Uniform issued on enrolment -Battle dress and coveralls
Ask me about - My exchange and liaison postings

From the Royal Canadian Artillery website:
Colonel L.H.P.S. Boucher will be appointed Chief Of Staff 2 Canadian Division
Support Base, in Montreal
Colonel G.F. Dame will be appointed Director Military Careers, Military
Personnel Command
Colonel B.W.G. McPherson will be appointed J7, at Canadian Joint Operational
Command
Colonel P.J. Williams will be appointed Director Arms Control Verification,
Strategic Joint Staff
Lieutenant-Colonel T.J. Bishop will be promoted to Colonel and will be  appointed Deputy Commander Canadian Armed Forces Recruiting Group  Headquarters
 Lieutenant-Colonel L.J. Hammond will be promoted to Colonel and will be  appointed Director Plans Western Hemisphere, Strategic Joint Staff
 Lieutenant-Colonel T.R. Young will be promoted to Colonel and will be  appointed Army G1, Canadian Army

I had a great visit at the Firepower Museum last week. They're putting together an impressive display and I would certainly mark it on my calendar the next time an invitation comes my way. Their current major project involves the restoration of a 17 Pounder Anti-tank Gun which was used by the 51st Anti-Tank Battery, 1st Anti-Tank Regiment in 1943. I've taken a few of the pictures below and the remainder I have shamelessly stolen from one of the Regimental newsletters. Great to see the work that the museum team is doing!

For those of you that missed the Army Ball this year, I thought I would provide you a link to my wife's blog that provides her view of the event. While the theme was mostly focused on the events of 1914 and the stand up of the R de Hull, PPCLI, R22eR and the Royal Montreal Regiment, I did manage to throw in a bit of Gunner flavour with my depiction of a Black adder Artillery Captain. Actually, the reenactors that assisted us with the show provided an excellent uniform depicting a Captain in the CFA (Canadian Field Artillery) from the 1st Division. Unfortunately, I was not assigned a batman to ensure that my Sam Brown was worn properly. Sigh. Anyone else with photos from the event?
Feel free to check out my wife's blog at Army Ball 2014.

The site has been up for almost one month and there have been some very positive comments made. Thank you for those!
I thought it would be a great time to make a few changes and see if they make an improvement.
Change #1- I've eliminated the Forum page, which no one has engaged.
Change #2 - I've renamed the old "What's New" page to "Calendar", because that's what the page really seemed to be about.
Change #3 - I've renamed the "Blog" page to a new "What's New" page in the hopes that we can use it to introduce any new and exciting information that everyone may be interested in.
I've attached an excel sheet that shows the quantity of visitors that we had to the site since we launched. I suppose our measure of success would be to hit a certain number of unique visitors per day. Probably not as great as the end of March when curiosity brought everyone in for a look.  Any suggestions that you might have as to how to keep our numbers up would be certainly appreciated. You can enter them as in the comments option below.
Cheers, Leon. 

New header pictures were put in place throughout much of the site. April appears to be a good month to go with a First World War artillery theme which keep us in line with the theme for the Army Ball this month. Unfortunately, I ran out of photos before I could get to OP de Hart headers. Does anyone have some jpeg photos that they would care to share?

For the month of May I was planning to replace the photos with photos of Artillery salutes in keeping with our Regimental birthday. Would really appreciate it if you happen to have any that capture the muzzle flash or feature different types of guns in use by the Canadian Artillery.

Cheers
Leon