Air cadets build homes for birds

Adelle Ellis
Times Reporter

Strathmore’s Gray’s Park will be home to even more species of birds, thanks to the Strathmore Air Cadets who participated in a citizenship day project that involved putting together, painting and installing 45 bird houses on April 1.
In recent years, the air cadets have been seen cleaning up several of the parks in town. This year, with the help of the Town of Strathmore and the Strathmore High School, they decided to do something a little different and a little more fun for their community service project.
The Strathmore High School shop teacher created bird house kits for the air cadets to assemble, and the Town of Strathmore put up 13 posts along the path in Gray’s Park for the cadets to put their bird houses on.
The air cadets spent the morning building the bird houses from the pre-made kits, and then they painted them in an array of bright colours and fun designs. While they waited for the paint to dry, they walked the path in Gray’s Park picking up trash.
The air cadet officers decided to make the day more exciting for the cadets by arranging some “survive Strathmore” scenarios and tasks that had the cadets using their first aid training to take care of some made-up minor emergencies.
“This is different (for the cadets) so anytime we do something different, it sparks a little more interest. We like changing things up, it helps us get more engagement,” said Strathmore Air Cadets commanding officer Capt. Jon Peters.
The Strathmore Air Cadets currently has over 50 cadets enrolled in the popular program.
“One of the aims of the air cadet program is to promote good citizenship and leadership in Canada’s youth,” said Capt. Peters. “One of the things we do as part of our training program is to dedicate time to citizenship or community service activities.”
Recently, there has been more components added to the environmental stewardship part of the air cadet program, and Capt. Peters has made sure to keep on top of the new program guidelines.
“We’ve had guest speakers come to talk about environmental stewardship and caring for the planet. That is another part of the clean up as well, making sure we keep our park areas nice for everyone,” he said.
Citizenship day is part of the mandatory training program for the air cadets. It is funded by the Department of National Defence (DND), which provides the cadets with lunch and pays for any extra costs. The local squadron sponsor committee paid for the rental of using the agriculture grounds and for the materials used to build the bird houses. Even though a community service project is mandatory, most of the cadets enjoy being able to help clean up the community and to help give back.
“It will give some nice places for the birds to live and it will be a nice feature to the park. It’s always nice to give back where we can,” said Capt. Peters.