New officer Justus DeRuiter has enrolled in Canadian Forces on March 5 at the Legion Hall in Estevan. DeRuiter has been involved with cadets for most of his life and now felt that it was time to move forward with his career.
“I had the support behind me to actually go and enroll in the Canadian Forces, and to get my actual membership to take the cadet career to the next step,” said DeRuiter.
Born and raised in Edmonton, DeRuiter moved to Estevan two years ago and for the last year, he was an instructor with the Estevan army cadets. He believes that the program significantly enriched his life.
“The cadet core helped me so much to get to where I am today. If I was not with cadets, I wouldn’t have life skills I would need to be a peace officer at the age of 22.”
DeRuiter works for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). He believes that most knowledge he needed to pursue this career he developed through the cadets' program.
“You need to have judgment skills, you need to be able to react to situations differently, you also need to have good multitasking skills,” DeRuiter said.
“You need to manage people, and that’s a great cadet skill that I got from that. It also helps a lot with your discipline. You are not out partying every night or what not, with cadets you actually need to go and sew on your badges and everything and partake in these extracurricular activities to advance. So I took advantage of that and it all just worked so well in this peace officer job, it’s like a perfect correlation,” he added.
Through his own example, DeRuiter promotes the advantages of involvement with cadets and he encourages more people to take this opportunity.
DeRuiter has been a cadet; he aged out at it as high as possible. Then, he came back as an instructor and did that for a year in Edmonton and later in Estevan. Now he is looking forward to being a part of the Canadian Forces.
“It was such a special feeling that you know you are now at this band of brothers and you instruct cadets, and you make the next generation to try as good as I am,” said DeRuiter.
The new position brings in more responsibility and time commitment as well, but DeRuiter believes he has enough knowledge by now to successfully move forward.
“This is the first step of many, I don’t know where this program will take me. I’m only 22 years old so I have a long time to go very far,” DeRuiter said.
