R Steve introduced Capt. Robin Brooks:
After meeting Ian Douglas at an Honours and Awards presentation at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 100 in the spring of 2010, Robin Brooks became part of the original team that started the Royal Canadian Army Cadet unit in Brighton. Based on her prior experience of raising funds by organizing charity dances and golf tournaments, Robin was asked to be the first Support Chair and create a committee to begin the fundraising for the corps. By the end of the first year, Robin saw a need for female officers and applied to become a member of the Cadet Instructor Cadre.
Robin started her CIC career February 28, 2012 and worked her way through the corps by holding all of the major roles important to running the corps: Supply Officer, Administration Officer, Training Officer and currently Commanding Officer. Robin is very proud to have grown the corps during her tenure and takes great pleasure seeing how successful her cadets have become as young adults.
In her civilian life, Robin lives in Belleville and works for Hexo Corporation as the Shipper/Receiver.
Robin is the proud parent to her son, Joe and daughter-in-law Julie and grandmother to Robert and John. They currently are posted in Edmonton and Robin is looking forward to the end of the pandemic so that she can fly there and spend some time with them.
Capt Brooks loves to talk about the Cadets. They are great people.
They recently received National recognition for 10 years in service. She fondly remembers that first meeting in 2010 with Ian and Clay at the Brighton Legion. Great people and become friends. All of the staff with the cadets are wonderful people.
The Brighton Cadets have had up to 65 cadets. Currently at 55. They modified their program during the pandemic, continuing their training via Zoom in the evenings. Capt Brooks tries to join as many of these training sessions as possible, they are almost every night with different age groups. Internet access is an issue for some so the don't use visual to save bandwidth.
The Cadets are geared to service and anxious to help those in the community when asked.
Last year in early fall the Brighton Legion allowed the cadets to train in person on Sunday's. They trained in small groups, keeping distance, outside when weather permitted. They stopped the in person training when numbers started to rise again in late fall.
They get great support from Forces. Also Kids Hot Line and CF hot line. Support for both parents and kids.
The Cadets learn leadership skills, problem solving and meeting deadlines. They learn responsibility.
Typically they have summer training camps. They hope to be able to resume these in 2021. They were planning on a training camp for the new recruits during March break but that is now up in the air. But they are adaptable.
Their support committee of primarily parents do most of the fund raising. They have an informal bottle collection of supporters during Pandemic. In 2020 they raised about $3,000. However, expenses way down because they can't do much.
They welcome all kinds of training and trainers. They have had some success with marks man ship. winning a bronze in 2020.
Robin is very proud of the Cadets.
The Cadets take pride in their participation at the cenotaph during vigil each year and miss not being able to do in last year.
There will be a change in command in May this year. But there are three great candidates.
We thanked Capt Brooks for sharing and her service to Brighton and the Cadets.