Canadian military, based in Blyth, continues to prepare for Operation Trillium Venture
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Operation Trillium Venture will soon be coming to Huron and Bruce Counties. No, it’s not a new Mission Impossible movie - it’s the latest in a series of annual training exercises undertaken by the Canadian military to make it more possible for our reserve forces to offer aid in the event of an emergency in Southwestern Ontario.
The exercise will be occurring over the first weekend in May, from Friday, May 3 to Sunday, May 5. During that time, approximately 800 military personnel will be participating in simulated emergency scenarios in towns throughout Huron and Bruce Counties. Some will be stationed as far north as Lion’s Head, with the highest concentration of soldiers located in Blyth.
The press conference was led by Lieutenant Colonel Chris van den Berg, Commanding Officer of 31 Territorial Battalion Group. He hoped to shed some light on the specific purpose of the training exercise. “It’s not complex, what we do, but I don’t think it’s really well understood... the Army Reserves play an important role in supporting the regular Army, in international conflicts and when the military is called upon to support our communities during emergency events.”
The 31 Canadian Brigade Group is a formation of the Canadian Army Reserves. It consists of 12 units, located across Southwestern Ontario, with headquarters in London. The Brigade has approximately 2,000 reservists - part-time soldiers that train on evenings and weekends. “Our area of operations is more or less a triangle that runs from Hamilton to Windsor to Owen Sound.”
Within that Brigade is 31 Territorial Battalion Group - a composite unit consisting of soldiers from all 12 of those units. “Once we’ve constituted this battalion, it becomes the command structure for the soldiers that we then deploy into an area of operations.”
The simulated emergency scenario for the exercise will be an extreme heatwave, but the main purpose of Operation Trillium Venture is to sharpen members’ collective organizational skills and capacity for teamwork in the face of an emergency. “This year, our aim is to test our ability to rapidly force generate the battalion, and project them up to 250 kilometres from the force generating station,” said van den Berg. “The exercise will provide a valuable learning experience for our troops.”
Potential training tasks could be anything from population wellness checks to emergency roadwork. “It will also provide us with the opportunity to test our interoperability with provincial and municipal emergency services,” he explained. “Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it’s an opportunity for the people to interact with their soldiers.”
“Fundamentally, the military is in the business of being ready to respond in cases of significant uncertainty,” van den Berg explained, using a recent real-life crisis as an example. During the COVID-19 pandemic, conditions of many Ontario’s long-term care (LTC) homes degraded rapidly, causing undue pain, suffering and even death for residents and staff. The Canadian military was asked to step in, and soldiers were deployed to assist with the situation before it escalated further.
“That’s a skill set that, prior to COVID, that we never thought we would need. Now, having gone through that experience, we know that we need to acquire that skill set. We hope it never comes to that again, but it’s something we want to be ready to do if we need to again... anything we’ve learned from the past that can help us prepare for the future is something we’re going to try and incorporate into scenarios going forward.”
Further details on the specifics of Operation Trillium Venture will be made available as the launch date for the exercise approaches.