AURORA Heron Spit it was called at first. Later, as the world turned and others came to view the barren, wind and salt-spray swept bit of land other names were used. But it was always AURORA. It had always been there, or so it seemed to the green-eyed boy leaning against his bicycle, staring at the lights of the long jetty that thrust into the dark waters of Comox Harbour.
AURORA A Royal Navy haven where the tall ships that flew the White Ensign could refit and clean their copper-plated hulls. The boy could almost see the third and fourth rates, their black hulls slashed with white, turning slowly at their anchorage, rising and falling as the tide ebbed and flowed.
AURORA A Royal Canadian Navy establishment from 1914, all but barren and used as a 1000-yard firing range where young sailors of Canada's fledgling Navy banged away at stationary targets made of paper. The boy could almost hear the ragged volleys and smell the gunpowder drifting on the wind, and see the White Ensign that flew from the Mast.
AURORA Another war, and now called NADEN IV, an outpost of the Royal Canadian Navy still. Flimsy tarpaper barracks and classroom buildings now lined the Spit, and on the dusty Parade Square stood another generation of young Canadians training to fight another war. They were all young men, boys from Alberta, from Ontario, boys from every province in the Dominion. Boys who would, when their training in Combined Operations was completed, be shipped out, to be replaced by more boys, from Nova Scotia, from New Brunswick, from Quebec. The boy could almost see them, tall, proud, the cap tallies on their distinctive round caps tied with a tiddly butterfly bow, their bell-bottomed trousers creased seven times for the Seven Seas, saluting the White Ensign that flew from the Mast.
AURORA The war progressed and Canada needed every man. A new element appeared on the Parade Square. Sea Cadets. On the Parade Square mustered young sailors in training, Sea Cadets from British Columbia for the most part. Young, frightened boys away from home for the first time but determined to make their newfound brothers proud of them. They were all brothers. Nelson had called them brothers, A Band of Brothers, Brothers of the Sea. The boy could hear the whispered promises and pledges. The boy cadets would keep the Faith. They would guard the White Ensign that flew from the Mast.
AURORA The Royal Canadian Navy was gone. The buildings, temporary wartime structures, remained. Ragged, leaking, with sagging roofs and cracked windows, but sufficient for housing another generation of boys. The Navy was gone, but the Sea Cadets remained. Heron Spit and the ramshackle buildings were now a Sea Cadet Training Establishment. The boy could hear the loud groans and plaints of disgust as the newest generation viewed with jaundiced eye the crumbling barracks and windblown Parade Square, and the words of quiet pride as their eyes looked upward and saw the White Ensign flying from the mast.
AURORA 1976 and Her Majesty's Canadian Ship AURORA, which had been a summer training adjunct to the main training camp in Victoria, a satellite to the Esquimalt Sea Cadet Camp was now, with the closure of Esquimalt, the main training base for Sea Cadets in Western Canada. The jerry-built wartime structures were gone, replaced with more substantial H-shaped wooden barracks, a rebuilt Drill Shed, a new Stores Building and a refurbished jetty and Boat House. The Mast remained, now flying a lesser flag.
The boy reached around and pulled a black wool ski cap from the saddlebag of his bike. His eyes gazed longingly at the lights of the buildings that line the Spit. HMCS AURORA now lay quiet in the darkness, the boys asleep. During the day, in the light and sun of perennially perfect days, the Spit was alive with teenaged boys, hundreds of teenaged boys.
The boy smiled wolfishly as he pulled the ski mask over his head. He turned his bike toward the deep woods that lined the road leading to the Spit. He would hide his bike in the weather-beaten shack. Soon, very soon, he would make his way to the cluster of buildings halfway down the Spit. Soon, very soon, his hand would reach out and his fingers would lovingly caress the warm, soft skin of one of the Boys of AURORA.