The head of Alberta’s army reservists stepped down on Saturday.
Col. Roy Boehli handed over control of the 41 Canadian Brigade during a ceremony at the Military Museums.
Boehli served in domestic and foreign operations during his time with the armed forces. Most recently, he helped organize troops following the June flood that hit much of Southern Alberta.
Col. Boehli says one of the reasons that Operation Lentus, the military’s response to the flood, was so successful is because reservists had been training for a fictional Calgary flood during the months prior to the real thing.
“Low and behold the real thing hits,” he says, “and my battle group commander came to me and said ‘Geeze sir, its handy when what we practiced turns out to be the real mission”.
Col. Boehli’s successor has described the deployment as one of the most text book responses for the reserves.
One of the reservists in Boehli’s command told Global News that Operation Lentus was his first time operating in a real domestic emergency with a local civilian crew.
“We learned a lot about how to work with CEMA; how to work with all the city branches that were doing flood responses. Both at the coordination level and on site,” he says.
In total, over 2,000 Canadian forces members were mobilized during Operation Lentus. It is believed to be the largest peacetime deployment for Calgary reserve regiments.
Col. Boehli works full time as an operations manager at Calgary Transit.
Comments