Jarvis plans on becoming a nurse in the Royal Canadian Navy. “That’s my goal,” she says, “a nursing career in the RCN.” She is applying to the Regular Officer Training Plan (ROTP) this year and hopes to be accepted by her second year of UBC Nursing School.

Jarvis’s road to success was fraught with barriers. The stigma of being a foster child held challenges for her in her daily life. School was a nightmare for Jarvis who always felt like an interloper; fitting in to her school environment where she endured severe and prolonged bullying was difficult. “The kids were mean because I was different.”

Always feeling like an outsider, Jarvis finally felt like she fit in when she started the Royal Canadian Sea Cadet programme and found her sanctuary.

“I was nervous at first but was really wanting to try it. On my first day I walked in wearing Uggs and a sweatshirt. The coxswain told me I looked great and then she placed me in formation, put her arm around me and said I fit right in and that I was welcome there. She took me under her wing right away and I felt wonderful and like I belonged. She taught me everything and I soaked it all up,” says Jarvis. “That was the day my life changed. I found my safe place. I really had a sense that this was right for me. I never looked back.”

Jarvis describes how she wore her Sea Cadet uniform like a mantle of belonging, a cloak of protection. She describes how she felt the day she put on her uniform for the first time: “It gave me immediate strength. Every time I wear it, I have confidence, and to me it is a symbol of fierce pride and of how much I love being a Sea Cadet. I am in charge, not necessarily of others, but of myself. This is a very empowering feeling for me.”

By age 16, Jarvis was British Columbia’s top Sea Cadet with an impressive accrual of accomplishments. She was selected for a tall ship deployment on the British sail-training vessel The Royalist, and travelled to the United Kingdom for the sailing voyage where the Sea Cadets were taught to crew the large brig. That year Jarvis also won the prestigious Canadian Vimy prize for an essay she wrote about the Canadians who fought alongside the French in the battle to take Vimy Ridge in 1917. The prize included a trip to France to experience the memorial site at Vimy. “Standing there on Vimy soil in France was the moment I knew I wanted to join the Canadian Armed Forces,” she says.