I was very pleased to open February 3rd’s issue of the CF newspaper The Maple Leaf and see a piece on my friend Padre Jean Francois Noel, chaplain to the 2nd Battalion of the French-Canadian Royal 22nd Regiment, based in Valcartier, Quebec. I had the privilege of doing Basic Training with J-F as we called him, and at 26 years old he holds the distinction of being the youngest chaplain in the CF.

I especially liked JF’s analogy, “The chaplain is like the yeast in the dough. It doesn’t take much of it for the dough to rise, but if it is not there, nothing happens. If the chaplain does good, good things happen, which is important for the unit.” Read the whole piece here.