CAF Story | “That fire keeps getting stronger.”
Transcript - CAF Story
I'm a small town person. I used to live... I kind of lived in my car and couch surfed and now, I serve the prime minister of Canada.
My name is Sgt Karen Nightingale, I'm a Flight Steward with 437 Squadron in CFB Trenton.
When I joined the Forces, a fire was kind of lit under me. That fire keeps getting stronger and I don't see any point in stopping. It’s made me proud to be Canadian and be proud of me.
I had a lot of potential, but not a lot of direction. I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself, I just never knew what that was.
When I found the Forces, that was really where my life began.
The charity work that I do and, you know, all the other things that I get involved with, that comes from the Forces. I think without the military instilling that confidence in me, maybe that stuff wouldn't have happened.
I feel it's really important to get involved in your community. We have to meld into a different community every 4-5 years.
You're only going to get out of it what you put into it. I've taken that to the max.
Da Bomb Girls is really just a group of girls who love to dress up as 50's pin-up models and to raise money for animal welfare.
The DJing is something that's super fun and I get to act like, you know, a different person and dress up like an 80's rock star and show up and everybody thinks it's hilarious.
Bodybuilding is such a challenge for me. It gives me a sense of accomplishment and, like, I can look back on that and say: "I did that."
Being an army cook for as long as I've been an army cook... I've always been a part of a front-line unit and it's been a wild ride the whole way through.
I needed a little bit of a change of pace. And Flight Steward was something that was always kind of in my sight, but I never really started thinking about it until about a 9-10 year mark. I applied, I got in right away and it's been a whirlwind ever since.
Serving the prime minister and his wife on the aircraft, I think I've been in like 30 countries in the last two years, there's a wide range of excitement. All those experiences are second to none.