Since the subject of the Cougar has come up, let me offer what I recall after having watched the program bloom from the sidelines. First, by 1970 the plan was to get out of the tank business completely. In Germany what was called 4th Canadian Mechanized Battle Group was first going to be airmobile as Centag reserve and then I think was going to be a reconnaissance force after somebody decided that the helicopters to lift the formation would be too expensive. A deal to purchase the British Scorpion with the 76mm turret cam very close to fruition, but foundered when the Brits would not licence Canada to manufacture the ammunition. So the Centurion survived in Europe and Gagetown on for a few years more.
However the rest of the corps was stuck between a rock and a hard place. What was the role - recce, light armour or what? When the plan to lease Leopards and then purchase others was developed, the RCAC realized it was still in the tank business. What to do as the government was dead against tanks in Canada? (A few years earlier PM Trudeau had stated that there was no place for tanks in Canada, for whatever reason and I suspect it was emotion, and not reason, that drove the decision, contrary to his family motto.)
And so the Cougar was born from a mutation of the Mowag chassis and the Scorpion turret. It was dubbed a tank trainer and some very exalted personages went on record saying that it would never be used operationally. The CDS was in the process of setting up the SSF at the time, but I don't know what was in his mind. What I do know is that ten years or so earlier the army had looked at 'armoured cars' for low intensity operations and he was commanding the "light brigade" at the time. So were these pronouncements designed to keep the government happy or to keep the troops quiet or what? I got a very stern talking to for suggesting that the armoured corps would end up using the Cougars in an operation somewhere, because there would be nothing else available.
Circa 1978 the armoured school was told to be prepared to teach the Cougar as a recce vehicle. The CO caught a ton of crap for suggesting that a school bus would be equally useful, which proves that it is not only gunners who don't know when to keep their mouths shut.
And then came the RV exercises with the Cougars employed as tank trainers, and then the Balkans and Somalia. And the rest, as they say, is history.
