By Josh Howald

The military is in town.

Several Canadian Forces vehicles rolled into Kincardine Sunday afternoon, and were seen parked at the Governor’s Inn Best Western Sunday night.

Members of the 1st Canadian Division Headquarters are in town for training. According to a release issued by the Department of National Defence, the Division will be working with other Federal government departments to prepare to evacuate Canadian entitled persons from a failed state anywhere in the world. It is called a Non-Combative Evacuation Operation, or NEO Exercise.

Exact details of the training weren’t released, but the exercise did begin last Monday, and will continue until Friday afternoon. Similar training is also being conducted this week in Owen Sound.

“We pick a couple of towns every year,” said Public Affairs Officer Major Scott Spurr Monday afternoon.

Last year, the exercises were conducted in Peterborough and Belleville.

“We choose places we can travel to (in terms of travel time, in order to duplicate the experience)

Even staying at the Best Western was selected for a reason.

“When we go to a country, we generally will go into a hotel and work out of a conference room,” said Spurr.

 The 1st Canadian Division Headquarters is based out of CFB Kingston. It’s mission is “to provide task-tailored, deployable joint headquarters at high readiness to command and control joint, inter-agency, multinational forces to achieve national objectives at home and abroad.” It is the Canadian Force’s standing HQ of choice to lead operations throughout the spectrum of conflict.

For example, the Division could respond to Humanitarian Assistance or NEO anywhere in the world.

Public Affairs Officer Major Scott Spurr will be conducting a media information centre today (Wednesday) at the Best Western in Kincardine.