AGE-OLD DANGERS, BUT NEW SUPPORT FOR TODAY’S SOLDIERS
He was a proud member of Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians), a registered armoured regiment of the Canadian Forces whose members are also known as “Strats.”
Still, when Steve Critchley was ordered in the early 1990s not to wear his military uniform in public, he didn’t need to be told why.
“It was right after the Somalia affair,” he says, referring to the military scandal resulting from the beating death of a Somali teen at the hands of two Canadian soldiers, those soldiers ostensibly in that restive East African country as part of a humanitarian mission. “It was a pretty low time for us in the military.”
Critchley, who was a 28-year dedicated soldier, also recalls many a lonely Remembrance Day commemoration. “We’d be on parade, outside the Calgary Military Museums,” he says. “There would be only about 35 people there to see us, most of them family members of soldiers.”
Life has changed for the former Calgarian, who today devotes his post-military life to helping people dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma, many of them current or former serving members of the Canadian Forces.
It’s also changed for our country’s military, which has seen a sea change in recent years when it comes to the public’s understanding and appreciation of the sacrifices made by those willing to put themselves in harm’s way for their fellow citizens.
In recent years, you’d be hard pressed on Remembrance Day to find an available parking spot in the southwest Calgary neighbourhood that surrounds the Military Museums.
Just a kilometre or so west of the longtime site of local Remembrance Day ceremonies each year, the Wall of Honour in Peacekeeper Park more than hints at a key reason for this radical shift in the public attitude towards the military: among the more than 190 names of fallen southern Alberta soldiers since the Second World War are those of many people who today would still be in their 30s had they returned home safely from the country’s latest mission.
Canada’s decade-long Afghanistan deployment, which officially ended in 2014, was a brutal awakening for Canadians still under the impression that ours was a military mostly of blueberet wearing peacekeepers, a conceit that collapsed in the face of the country’s most significant combat engagement since the Korean War.
Those Calgarians attending Remembrance Day ceremonies also turn out for the sunrise and sunset ritual throughout November at the Calgary Field of Memorial Crosses, where 3,400 white crosses represent fallen southern Albertans from battles stretching back over more than a century.
Today, such now-familiar names as Cpl. Nathan Hornburg, Capt. Nichola Goddard — who did not live in Calgary but whose parents, Sally and Tim, were longtime residents — and Herald journalist Michelle Lang, who was killed along with four soldiers in 2009 while embedded with the Canadian Forces in Kandahar, receive their own ceremonies at the site along Memorial Drive N.W.
The more than 40,000 soldiers who were deployed to Afghanistan beginning in the early 2000s have also raised the issue of how, outside of annual Nov. 11 events, this country treats its individual military members.
A recent survey by Statistics Canada found that a growing number of military members have found the return home a harsh one: 42 per cent of veter- ans who retired between 2012 and 2015 reported problems, significantly more than the 29 per cent of those who retired before 2012.
While the federal government has continually pledged to work harder to streamline the bureaucracy around such issues as disability payments, pensions and transition assistance, the complaints by individual soldiers also continue. Just this week, a veterans group accused the government of cutting disability pensions at the same time Canadian soldiers were being wounded and killed in Afghanistan.
The gaps in governmental assistance are what led Steve Critchley to start up his equine therapy program, Can Praxis, which runs out of a ranch near Rocky Mountain House.
With funding from such organizations as Wounded Warriors Canada, one of the most prominent of the many that have been created in recent years to fill gaps in government support, Critchley has been able to offer his services free of charge to Canadian Forces members.
“So much more has been put in place in recent years,” says Critchley, who lives an hour north of the city on an acreage, of programs like his to help returning soldiers suffering from such issues as PTSD. “But we are doing a lot of catchup work when it comes to soldiers who have mental health injuries.”
Critchley’s program partner, psychologist and equine specialist Jim Marland, says they are increasingly seeing — along with soldiers having difficulty after tours in Afghanistan — soldiers who were deployed in Bosnia and earlier missions.
“It’s the kind of injury that can take years to show itself,” says Marland, adding that this past summer’s Stampede Road Race also helped them out with a donation of nearly $40,000. “But it’s real and the demand for our program is proof of that.”
When it comes to the real life issues of soldiers on deployment, Lt.-Col. Eric Gilson agrees that there have been some major developments in recent years that have mitigated some of the stresses.
“Technology has really changed the experience of being away from home,” says the former Calgarian who now lives in Edmonton. Gilson, a reservist since 1987, was recently in Lebanon, where the Canadian Forces have been helping to secure the borders of that country and Jordan from ISIL insurgents.
“Back in 2003 I was in Bosnia and it was a phone call once a week for 30 minutes,” he says. “This time, it was texting anytime and having daily FaceTime with my wife.”
That, along with services offered by organizations like the Calgary and Edmonton Military Family Resource Centres, says Gilson, has made being a modern-day soldier a better experience than in previous decades. “The public is more aware now of what we do,” he says. “I think the mission in Afghanistan had a lot to do with that.”
The loved ones waiting at home have also witnessed big changes in the support they receive from the greater community. “I wore my husband’s military jacket the last couple of months of my pregnancy,” says Shanna McCutcheon, whose husband Cory, a captain with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry regiment, is currently deployed overseas.
“Everywhere I went, people wanted to chat with me,” says the Morinville mom of a newborn daughter. “It’s not just people in the military community, it’s everyone.”
McCutcheon, who while living in Calgary worked as the welcome services and administration co-ordinator of the Calgary MFRC, says the combination of a more supportive community and the technological advances that keep her and her husband in daily contact have made a military spouse’s challenges more manageable.
“Mind you, it doesn’t hurt that he’s not in Afghanistan right now,” says McCutcheon, her understated comment highlighting the very real dangers Canada’s soldiers have faced over the past century and right up to present day. “When he was there in 2013, it was a very stressful time.”
For Steve Critchley, the changes in attitude are long overdue. “Things are much better today,” he says. “It’s great to see improved services to acknowledge the impact of the job, but we’ve still got a long way to go.”