We arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia after 6 days at sea. It was late at night and we disembarked in the early hours of the morning when it was still dark. We boarded a train that was to take us to Moncton in New Brunswick. I was very excited  about the journey as this was my first overseas visit. I was amazed how little interest some of my colleagues took in looking at the Canadian scene. So many of them just wished to play cards. I always said I knew nothing about cards! This was a lie as I was quite a good bridge player, but the thought of constantly having to play the game with a lot of boring people did not grab me. Moncton was a holding camp. Discipline was minimal and provided we caused no trouble we seemed to be able to do anything we liked within reason. We were not popular with the good citizens of Moncton, as there were too many of us, but no doubt the drugstore owners liked us. It was an eye opener after our wartime rations to go out and eat such enormous meals in the local  eateries. We were fascinated by the drugstores which seemed to be the centre of social life for the young people. There were juke boxes to which the young folk danced to and plenty of very rich milk shakes and enormous T-bone steaks. Our pay was stretched so visits to the drugstore were few and far between.  However the Canadians did have an organisation called USO. This stood for United Services Organisation. We could go into a nice warm building where we could  have coffee and cookies and talk to pretty young women. These girls were doing their war work by entertaining us. You could chat to them but no touching or dating! The Canadians did tell us that they had food rationing and it meant not being able to buy meat in a restaurant on a Tuesday. Tough!! We were not in Moncton for more than a week or two before we navigators were posted to No.1 Central Navigation School at Rivers, about 150 miles west of Winnipeg.

We went by train to Winnipeg. The journey took 3 days and it included  a 12-hour stopover in Montreal. Quebec Province seemed to be the only state with reasonably liberal drinking hours. The other provinces were semi dry with varying degrees of dryness. When we finally arrived in Winnipeg we were met by a large group of middle aged females who wanted to take our names and interests so that we could have social contacts when we visited the place on our weekends off. My friend Bob and I just said we were interested in having a good time. This was duly noted. We continued our journey to Rivers which was about 4 hours away by train. We were all very keen to get on with the flying part of our training. The course at No. 1 CNS lasted about  4 months and it was very interesting but also fairly hard work. I was interested to note that some of the students who seemed very bright on theory, fell to pieces when applying their knowledge to the business of actually flying. There were about 40 people on the course and about half a dozen never coped with more than a few hours flying. I think they were sent back to Britain for ground duties and reduced to the rank of AC2. I think about every other weekend we could go to Winnipeg if we wished. Some students favoured going to holiday places on the shore of Lake Manitoba. My friend Bob and I were given an address by the dear ladies who had met us when we arrived in Winnipeg. The address was in Winnipeg and when the opportunity came we visited it and found ourselves being entertained by a widow with a very pretty daughter who was still going to High School. It just so happened that this attractive girl had an equally good looking school chum who joined us for an evening meal. It all seemed like one of those Andy Hardie pictures that were churned out with Judy Garland  as the female lead playing the part of a love struck high school girl and her boy friend played by Mickey Rooney. I was lucky in being in Canada when there was extraordinary sunspot activity. This meant that at night-time the heavens were lit up by the most spectacular coloured lights hanging down like some giant curtain that was constantly changing colour. The only problem with this was that we were being taught to navigate by the stars and it was hard to find the particular star you were looking for as it would be obscured by the colours in the sky!