Base Administration’s S1 Passy – Human Resource Administrator
[caption id="attachment_24980" align="aligncenter" width="595"] Sailor First Class (S1) Andrea Passy[/caption]2Lt Jamie Boparai Base Administration––Not many people know at age sixteen which career they want.For Sailor First Class (S1) Andrea Passy, she was attracted to the profession at arms well before then. Her family baby-sat for a military member, and that person had a big influence in her life, she says. “He spoke fondly about his trade as a naval communicator which influenced me, not only to join but to follow in his footsteps.”She joined the Primary Reserves with HMCS Unicorn in Saskatoon, SK, at 16. She needed parental consent as one must be at least 18 years old to join the Canadian Armed Forces Primary Reserves. But there are exceptions. To join so young, one must be enrolled as a full-time student and have parental permission. “I think my parents were a little surprised at the time with me going in this direction, but they have always supported me. They were the ones that had to sign on the dotted line for my enrollment after all.”She trained to become a Naval Communicator, a trade that establishes and maintains communication over Canadian and allied networks using various frequencies, lines of sight, and long-range satellite communications. “I saw a lot of things at a young age that I might not have seen in the civilian world. Once a week we would come in for lectures and specialized training, such as seamanship and knot tying. On special occasions, we would even take a small RHIB out on the river for live training exercises. It was a lot of fun.”She got real sea time in HMCS Toronto during Operation Reassurance in 2014. That cemented her direction to go regular force, which she did a year later. However, because she joined at such a young...