Reveille
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXNuwZLkliQ
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WOUNDED WARRIORS- THE SOUTH POLE CHALLENGE- 2013
WWTW South Pole Allied Challenge Launch 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viREfz5ysps
Prince Harry, Patron of Walking With The Wounded officially launching the WWTW South Pole Allied Challenge with which Arqiva is the chosen communications partner.
CANADA, USA, AUSTRALIA AND U.K.
AND..
OTTAWA - Master Cpl. Chris Downey and Cpl. Alexandre Beaudin D'Anjou will represent Canada at the South Pole Allied Challenge - a 320 km race to the South Pole that involves and raises money for ill and injured military personnel.
Downey and D'Anjou will be on a Commonwealth team alongside two Australian colleagues in November.
MORE: Canadian troops win bronze at special ops competition overseas
They'll compete against a British team led by Prince Harry, a military helicopter pilot, and an American team in the challenge expected to last up to a month.
Gov. Gen. David Johnston honoured the Canadian participants on Friday.
"It's difficult to imagine a greater physical and mental challenge than an expedition to the South Pole, one of the most inhospitable landscapes on Earth," said Johnston.
U.K.-based charity Walking With the Wounded organized the expedition.
The Department of National Defence assisted Canada's participation through Soldier On, a program that helps serving and retired ill and injured personnel.
--------------
Canadian troops win bronze at special ops competition overseas
The elite Canadian Special Operations Regiment kicked some butt at the fifth annual Warrior Competition held in Jordan last month. The Canadians placed third after two teams from China.
The event is held every year at the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Centre.
The impressive desert site boasts full-sized buildings, passenger planes and gas stations for situational drills including hostage taking and terrorist attacks.
Special ops soldiers and police use the spot to sharpen their skills to become the best of the best.
A Canadian team leader said the competition was "fun," the Jordan Times reported.
Thirty-five teams from 18 different countries went head-to-head over four days of competition, repelling from helicopters, clearing rooms and taking out mock terrorists hijacking jets. Medics also compete with each other showing who can get to the wounded fastest and stabilize them.
The Canadian regiment is based at CFB Petawawa in Ontario and was formed in 2006. It traces its roots back to the legendary "Black Devils" joint unit of Canadian and American troops who teamed up in the Second World War.
Canadian Armed Forces personnel from the Army, Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force are all eligible for the regiment, however the army makes up the bulk of the ranks, totalling about 450 troops. The unit works closely with Joint Task Force 2.
Despite the Canadians being listed on the official Warrior Competition website, the Department of National Defence would not comment on the event.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/world/archives/2013/04/20130417-144556.html
comment:
JTF2 - Canadian Special Operations Regiment - has come a long way since Chretien degraded and demoralized the CAF. Kudos boys - you make us proud!
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Operation Nanook 13 Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. August 2 2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhEwSZPPcfw
Members of 5 Field Ambulance practice an emergency medical response during Operation Nanook 2013 in Whitehorse, Yukon.
and..
Operation Nanook (1946) --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODx-rvvFumU
Operation Nanook was an Arctic expedition undertaken by the United States Navy in 1946. It consisted of , , USCGC Northwind (WAG-282), , , and .
Norton Sound remained at anchor there, in North Star Bay, servicing her two PBMs. Meanwhile, Whitewood and Atule operated from North Star Bay
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THANKS RUSSIA 4 THE SHARE.... and respecting our troops like we respect yours :-)
????????? ?????? ? ??????????? Canadian troops in Afghanistan (Russian and Canadian translat.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyiIun4RNt0&feature=share
http://youtu.be/eyiIun4RNt0
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Heaven was needing a hero (Hommage Canadien 2012 Canadian Tribute)-Jo Dee Messina
One Pissed off Canadian Housewife
This is very good PLEASE read....Thought you might like to read this letter
to the editor.
Ever notice how some people just seem to know how to write a letter?
This one surely does!
This was written by a Canadian woman, but oh how
it also applies to the U.S.A., U.K. and Australia .
Written by a housewife in New Brunswick , to
her local newspaper. This is one ticked off lady...
THIS ONE PACKS A FIRM PUNCH
TO THE EDITOR
"Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was
it or was it not, started by Islamic people who
brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001
and have continually threatened to do so since?
Were people from all over the world, not brutally murdered
that day, in downtown Manhattan , across the Potomac from
the capitol of the USA and in a field in Pennsylvania?
Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn't they?
Do you think I care about four U. S. Marines urinating on some dead Taliban insurgents?
And I'm supposed to care that a few Taliban were
claiming to be tortured by a justice system of a
nation they are fighting against in a brutal Insurgency.
I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle
East, start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere belief
of which, is a crime punishable by beheading in Afghanistan .
I'll care when these thugs tell the world they are
sorry for hacking off Nick Berg's head, while Berg
screamed through his gurgling slashed throat.
I'll care when the cowardly so-called insurgents
in Afghanistan , come out and fight like men,
instead of disrespecting their own religion by
hiding in Mosques and behind women and children.
I'll care when the mindless zealots who blow
themselves up in search of Nirvana, care about the
innocent children within range of their suicide Bombs.
I'll care when the Canadian media stops pretending that
their freedom of Speech on stories, is more important than
the lives of the soldiers on the ground or their families waiting
at home, to hear about them when something happens.
In the meantime, when I hear a story about a
CANADIAN soldier roughing up an Insurgent
terrorist to obtain information, know this:
I don't care.
When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the
head when he is told not to move because he
might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank:
I don't care. Shoot him again.
When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and fed 'special' food, that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being 'mishandled,' you can absolutely believe, in your heart of hearts:
I don't care.
And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes
it's spelled 'Koran' and other times 'Quran.'
Well, Jimmy Crack Corn you guessed it.
I don't care!!
If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to
all your E-mail Friends. Sooner or later, it'll get to
the people responsible for this ridiculous behavior!
If you don't agree, then by all means hit the delete
button. Should you choose the latter, then please don't
complain when more atrocities committed by radical
Muslims happen here in our great Country! And may I add:
Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering, if
during their life on earth, they made a difference in
the world. But, the Soldiers don't have that problem.
I have another quote that I would like to
share AND...I hope you forward All this.
One last thought for the day:
Only five defining forces have ever offered to die for you:
1. Jesus Christ
2. The British Soldier.
3. The Canadian Soldier.
4. The US Soldier, and
5. The Australian Soldier
One died for your soul,
the other four, for you and your children's Freedom.
YOU MIGHT WANT TO PASS THIS ON,
AS MANY SEEM TO FORGET!
-------------------------
Canada's Highway of Heroes (Never had a chance to say goodbye)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKmA_DPeOrI
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Millions of us have watched in desperation as Mental Health Victims are totally ignored and even abused by a system that is so outdated and clueless .... that many Mental Health Victims commit suicide.... families weep and mourn and spend $$$$ they don't have.... and communities watch.... wonderful, incredible souls.... crash, burn and die from NO ACTUAL HELP AT ALL.... year in and year out.... seriously... it's 2013
Mental-health maze: 5 years of dead ends
August 9, 2013 - 4:54pm
EDITOR’S NOTE: We are not identifying the author of this opinion piece in order to protect the privacy of her daughter.
It was 2:30 a.m. when I picked up the hospital emergency room bracelet she had crumpled and thrown on the floor in disgust.
"Let’s leave. They can’t do anything for me here."
Sixteen. The bracelet listed her age as 16.
Can it really be that long?
Was it really five years ago that I went to pick her up at school only to learn my 12-year-old had left at 9:30 a.m.?
My brilliant, beautiful little girl who excelled at school, had lots of good friends and teachers who praised her kindness, her devotion to human rights, her clear-thinking and aptitude for school work.
She who started many sentences with, "When I become prime minister."
This was her response when I asked why she left school:
"Everybody’s changed. All my friends think about is boys and makeup and clothes."
That’s why she left. Because everybody had changed.
I didn’t know it then, but she had also changed — changed in ways unimaginable to me at that time.
Five years have passed.
She has attempted to go back to school. There have been amazing accommodations made in different schools to help her cope.
All have failed.
One principal told me that if she felt sitting on the school’s roof would make it easier for her to attend, he’d personally place the ladder against the wall.
His description of her included phrases like: "a beautiful child with an amazing intelligence," "a kid we can’t lose," "one of the good ones."
But there was nothing that could keep her there.
The social anxiety, the aversion to sounds, smells, to being touched increased and her self-loathing continued unabated.
Psychiatrists? Psychologists? By the truckload. And everyone had a different opinion.
The first psychiatrist prescribed Zoloft, an anti-depressant for what he diagnosed as manic depression. She was 13 at the time.
Less than a month later, she made her first suicide attempt.
A social worker at another hospital diagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder, prompting the psychiatrist to prescribe yet another drug.
Her anxiety deepened.
Finally, there was a private psychologist. By the time our private health plan paid for the final session, the psychologist determined, indeed, she had Asperger’s syndrome, but the psychologist had no time to treat her.
"Send her back to Child and Adolescent Mental Health."
And so we did.
We waited five months.
The new psychologist didn’t believe the diagnosis was accurate.
Indeed, after a questionnaire was completed, reviewed and scored, her triumphant conclusion was this child does not have Asperger’s syndrome, just as she suspected.
So what does she have? What makes it so that she can’t go to school, buries herself in her room? Can’t go out in public? Hates herself? Cuts herself?
What demons are within my child’s head?
Huh? Oh, it’s probably the onset of adolescence. We see this all the time. It’s very common.
There is a social anxiety group that meets every week. Let’s see if she might fit in.
Not so much. After some thought, the psychologist calls to say my daughter is just not the right fit for the social anxiety group because she’s resistant to going.
Imagine! A child with social anxiety resistant to joining a social anxiety group. Go figure.
Her mood deteriorates.
A new child psychiatrist diagnoses depression. Prozac is prescribed.
Another suicide attempt. A stint in pediatrics with a ’round-the-clock nurse at her side: there are no children’s mental health in-patient rooms in this area.
Paxil is prescribed.
Another suicide attempt.
This time a major manic break in the emergency room wins her a trip to the infamous 4-South wing at the IWK.
Heavily sedated, they move my little girl by ambulance to the only hope left.
Her arms are marked with silvery scars from old wounds and red, garish scars from the newer ones.
She is barely able to speak.
She is admitted involuntarily.
Staff is told she does not have a good relationship with her father and perhaps it would be best to keep him away for the time being.
He visits for three hours the next day. She grasps my hand when I enter her room and doesn’t let go until he leaves.
Staff is told she has social anxiety and can’t bear to be in large groups. They insist she must attend group therapy and accuse her of being stubborn.
They show her the padded room where, if she becomes a threat to herself or others, she is told she could be stripped naked and placed there for her own safety and the safety of others.
By this time, her 72-hour involuntary period is up and she is now voluntary. She can leave if she wishes.
She bolts.
Before we leave, a social worker suggests my daughter has Asperger’s syndrome.
Back home, there are more late night trips to emergency. New cuts on her arm. Sleeplessness, horrific fears, the complete inability to cope.
A visiting psychiatrist thinks she’s a perfect candidate for short-term psycho-dynamic therapy.
Worth a shot. After three visits, she refuses to continue.
Her family doctor tells her the psychiatrist feels she really doesn’t have a mental issue. It’s simply that her personality is negative. She needs to get rid of the negativity — behavioural therapy, cognitive therapy, perhaps.
"So there’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve been out of school for all these years, cut my arms, cried buckets and attempted suicide because I have a negative personality — that’s all," she says.
"Is being negative all the time not disordered thinking and is disordered thinking not the definition of mental illness?" she asks.
I have no answer.
There is a place, deep within my heart, where I fear there are no answers.
I recently read a piece in the Globe and Mail about a Toronto teenager who had the same kinds of problems. After slogging through the system, her parents took the advice of a psychologist and sent her to McLean Hospital, a psychiatric institute associated with Harvard University.
Doesn’t that sound impressive? Doesn’t that sound like they could make a difference in my daughter’s life? Like they could give her the skills necessary to do what she should be doing in this life she was given?
Seventy thousand dollars: that’s what it cost to save their daughter’s life.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1146851-mental-health-maze-5-years-of-dead-ends
COMMENT:
Keep on fighting for your daughter. Figure out what you can do along with the rest of your family and friends. That's what matters the most. Your love and support. If you add up the time spent in our NS health care facilities and compared it to the other situation you describe, it might add up to $70,000. Check out the new NS Government's mental health strategy. Do not give up.
COMMENT:
Contact Lenore Zann.... as a member of the National Strategy on Mental Health, see if she has any suggestions for proceeding.
COMMENT:
Families and children like this one are the "real" face of the mental health crisis in this country and province.
COMMENT:
I wish I could write this girl a letter. But at the same time I have no idea what I'd say. That what she's going through is horrible? That I'm familiar with at least some of the crap that happens when you end up in the mental health maze? That I'm sorry and I hope she gets better? That her story touched me?
I'm sure she's heard that many times. All the same I'll say it again here.
I hope things start looking up even a little bit, anonymous girl.
I laughed bitterly at the social anxiety group, go figure indeed.
COMMENT:
The problem I see with all this, including dear Rehtaeh when she tried to seek help for guidance in Nova Scotia, those who attend University and take these courses to become these mental health "experts"! are young.............never experienced trauma as those they so call "treat" their experience comes from books not the street where this all begins....................................You can not describe an orange if you've only eaten an apple
AND.... what Rehtaeh, Courtney, Amanda, Jamie from Ottawa went through... breaks our hearts
WE REMEMBER THE BULLYCIDES- our children matter in Canada- POLICE, TEACHERS, PARENTS, STUDENTS, MEDICAL, MENTAL HEALH LAXNESS AND COMMUNITIES- must not let our kids down.... r kids matter..... this is the proof.... why do the parents of the victim have 2 fight so hard 4 justice... WHY????
Rehtaeh’s dad wants to ‘set record straight’ on alleged rape
August 10, 2013 - 4:22pm By FRANCES WILLICK Staff Reporter
Rehtaeh Parsons’s father Glen Canning has spoken out about what he says happened the night Rehtaeh was allegedly raped. (THE CANADIAN PRESS)
Frustrated by the lack of sexual assault charges in the Rehtaeh Parsons case, the Cole Harbour teen’s father has spoken out about what he says happened the night Rehtaeh was allegedly raped.
In a 1,500-word blog post published late Friday, Glen Canning spells out the details of that November 2011 night that changed the young woman’s life forever.
Canning said in an email to The Chronicle Herald that he was motivated to write the piece by two factors: "the police saying the evidence did not support a charge of sexual assault and a few online random commentators stating Rehtaeh lied about being raped."
Police announced on Thursday evening that two young men would face child pornography charges in the case, but that there was not enough evidence to support sexual assault charges.
"I truly hope you read this with an open mind and just try to forget everything you know or think you know about this case," Canning writes in the post. "When you’re finished, you can conclude for yourself if you believe my daughter was telling the truth when she told the police she was raped."
The post is based on information provided not only by his daughter, but also by someone Canning calls "a first-hand witness" who sent his version of events through Facebook to Rehtaeh’s mother, Leah Parsons, shortly after Rehtaeh died.
Containing many details that have not yet been published, it outlines how much the girl drank, the few foggy recollections she had of that night, the circumstances under which the photo was taken and the witness’s account of what happened.
"What counts for me at this point is setting the record straight the best I can," Canning writes.
"Those are the details that came forward after her death. I don’t understand how anyone can read that account and think this was consensual sex. Or that it’s a case of regret. Or that my daughter was a ‘slut’ and only came up with the rape story after the photo was passed around. After the photo was circulated, she had a complete nervous breakdown …not a regret."
http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1147047-rehtaeh-s-dad-wants-to-set-record-straight-on-alleged-rape
AND...
Police: Arrests couldn’t have come before now
FRANCES WILLICK STAFF REPORTER
fwillick@herald.ca @CH_Frances
Police did not interview either o f the two boys arrested in the Rehtaeh Parsons case before Thursday because they could not legally compel them to speak, says the superintendent of Halifax RCMP.
Roland Wells said Friday that p olice made numerous contacts with many people who were connected to the case, including suspects, persons of interest, witness es and subjects o f the complaint, but that under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, no one is obligated to talk to police, even after being arrested.
And police must have "reasonable grounds" to make an arrest — something officers didn’t feel they had before Thursday. "If the grounds are not there, all we can do is invite and ask susp ects for an interview," Wells said.
Wells and Chief Jean-Michel Blais of Halifax Regional Police held a a rare evening news conference Thursday to announce that two 18-year-olds would face child pornography charges in relation to the case.
One faces one charge of making child porn and one charge of distributing it , while the other faces two charges of distributing child porn.
Neither accused can be named because they were minors at the time of the alleged offences.
The charges stem from a photo that was shared among teenagers after Rehtaeh was allegedly raped in November 2011 when she was 15 .
Several sources who have seen the photo have told The Chronicle Herald that it shows Rehtaeh leaning out a window as a b oy appears to penetrate her from b ehind.
Police initially investigated but closed the file without laying charges. They reopened the case in April after Rehtaeh died following a suicide attempt .
Wells said the two young men who were arrested "would have b een contacted in the past" to request an interview, but he didn’t know when or how. Asked whether they were contacted during the first investigation, he said "attempts would have been made."
Police use "whatever methods are appropriate" to contact people, such as texting, phoning, tweeting or visiting in person.
Rehtaeh’s parents, Leah Parsons and Glen Canning , said Thursday they were surprised to learn last week that none of the four boys they believe were involved in the alleged rape had been interviewed by police.
"I don’t think I even slept the whole weekend," Canning said. "I was just like, I can’t believe that. It doesn’t make any sense."
Parsons previously believed that one of the four boys had spoken with an officer, but that was not the cas e, she was told.
Blais said Thursday night that one boy had considered meeting with police but changed his mind.
"There was one of the youths that was contacted, and he did come in, at which point he refused to offer information," Blais told reporters.
Wells said he couldn’t say which or how many boys were contacted.
"I can’t even confirm that there were four people," he said.
"You and other p eople think that there were a certain number of subjects of interest or suspects, and that’s not accurate.
"All I can tell you is that we have been diligent in contacting all people that were involved in this incident ."
Wells said timing is critical when requesting an interview.
"In every investigation, officers make decisions about the timing of the investigation. When is the right time to arrest somebody and interview them? Do I want to have all of my information prior to that, or do I want to go in cold and not know a lot of the background?
"That timing is up to the investigator, when they feel is the most opportune time. Because, in fact, you can arrest people, you can interview people too early in an investigative process. You don’t have all of that information that might help you during that interview. You can never go back and redo a first interview."
Justice Minister Ross Landry and Marilyn More, the minister for the Action Team on S exual Violence and Bullying, will make an announcement Monday about an independent review of police actions and the Public Prosecution Service in relation to the Rehtaeh Parsons case.
With Selena Ross, staff reporter
AND...BULLSHIT AND BEANS..... ANONYMOUS.... U ARE OUR HEROES ON THIS DAY.... bullies and bullycide and paedophiles and sex trafficking..... of kids and women and girls..... thank u 4 all u do...no more... our kids matter....... NOT A THING WAS DONE UNTIL THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF US STEPPED UP... ESPEICALLY ANONYMOUS.... we will remember ur devotion always... thank u.
REHTAEH PARSONS CASE
Online activists hindered investigation, police say
Social media ‘diverted’ focus
STAFF REPORTER SELENA ROSS sross@herald.ca @CH_sross
The involvement of online activists drew attention to Rehtaeh Parsons’s case, including among p eople in her own community who were in a position to work with p olice.
But police said Thursday that the added pressure actually harmed the investigation.
"In fact, I can also tell you that some of the things that were put forward through social media has diverted our resources in the incorrect direction and taken us off our focus," said Chief Supt. Roland Wells of Halifax District RCMP at a news conference announcing the charges that were laid in the case.
Police have repeatedly warned that they are not enthusiastic about accepting tips from online sleuths.
A few days after the online collective Anonymous became involved in April, and after RCMP reopened the case, police said they couldn’t accept tips over social media.
A single person provided new information that allowed them to reopen the case, they said.
"This information did not come from an online source," they wrote when they announced they were reopening the case.
Those words were the only part of the RCMP news release that were written in bold font.
"The person providing the information is willing to verify who they are, the reason they’re providing it and is willing to work with police as part of the investigation," they said. On Thursday, Wells said that "we need real people to step forward with evidence and cooperate."
It isn’t clear who police consider to be an "online source" or "real people," or whether verifying one’s identity, providing a motivation, or other steps would make it p ossible for an online sleuth to submit information.
Police work requires tips, they said. At the news conference Thursday, Wells even said the public would be wrong to see Rehtaeh’s case as a matter for law enforcement.
"The tendency might be to look at this as a police issue. This is not a police issue," said Wells.
"This is about a . . . community issue, helping our youth be respectful to one another and to get through the struggles that they’re getting through."
Police intend to co-operate fully with an upcoming Justice Department review into whether the first phase of the investigation was conducted properly, they said.
"Whether or not that should have been before (charges were laid), we rely on the review to look at that and to tell us whether or not there were gaps," said Wells.
"We are in a constant state of learning to do things better, and in this job, it’s such an imperfect job in terms of human beings and investigative skills. And so we’re always looking to learn from these things."
AND... WHAT THESE MONSTERS DO 2 THE INNOCENT.... God's gonna getcha .... God's gonna getcha
Jail unlikely in child por n case
STAFF REPORTER FRANCES WILLICK fwillick@herald.ca @CH_Frances
A Dalhousie law professor says he doesn’t expect the two teenagers charged in the Rehtaeh Parsons cas e to end up in jail.
Wayne MacKay said it’s relatively rare for young people to be accused of child pornography o ffences.
"I’d be surprised if young people charged with this normally spend any jail time," he said Friday.
Police announced Thursday evening that two 18-year-olds had been charged in Rehtaeh’s case. One faces a charge of making child porn and a charge of distributing it , while the other faces two charges of distributing child porn. Neither has been named because both were minors when the alleged offences occurred.
The teens are to appear in Halifax youth court next Thursday.
MacKay said the Youth Criminal Justice Act contains "alternative measures" such as community service that can replace a sentence of incarceration.
Under the Criminal Code, an adult convicted of making or distributing child pornography receives a mandatory minimum sentence of a year in jail for an indictable o ffence and six months for a summary conviction.
But there are no mandatory minimum s entences for young o ffenders.
Last year in British Columbia, a teenager was sentenced to a year on probation for distributing obs cene material by emailing photos of an alleged rape at a party in Pitt Meadows, B.C. The court also instructed the teen, who was not named because of his age, to write an essay on the negative effects of social media.
Another young man , Dennis Warrington, was given a conditional discharge with 18 months on probation for distributing obscene material by posting photos of the same alleged assault on his Facebook page.
Both young men were initially charged with child porn offences but pleaded guilty to the less er charge.
MacKay believes that some people who have been following the Parsons case might view sentences like that as too lenient.
"I think people would be pretty unhappy with that," he said.
The high-profile nature of the case shouldn’t influence the sentencing, but MacKay said the judge will have the world spotlight site.
to contend with .
"Judges, I’m sure, are very principled about it, but they do live in the real world," he said. "It would be hard not to know that the world is watching what they’re going to do out o f the Rehtaeh Parsons case."
The Avalon Sexual Assault Centre in Halifax issued a statement on its Facebook page Friday evening urging more education and greater awareness about child pornography laws.
The charges in the Parsons case s end a message to the community that making and distributing child p orn are criminal actions, the statement said.
"Given the prevalence of the spreading of pornographic images through new technologies, we must continu e to push for more education and awareness on these issues, as well as the new laws," the Facebook post says.
Police did not lay sexual assault charges in the case, saying there was not enough evidence.
Rehtaeh’s parents say the Cole Harbour teen was assaulted in November 2011 when she was 15.
Avalon also called for changes in societal attitudes toward sexual assau lt .
"In order to prevent a similar situation from occurring again and to heal and move forward as a community, we need to change rape culture that condones and perpetuates sexual victimization, improve our understanding of consent, improve sexual assault response and increase sexual assault programs and services in Nova Scotia."
A third young Nova Scotian will also appear in youth court next week to face child porn charges.
A 14-year-old boy from the Preston area is charged with making and possessing child pornography and making it available to others.
Police allege the boy took a video of a consensual sex act involving a 15-year-old girl without her knowledge and posted the video on a social media
AND...... IT TOOK 2 WHOLE YEARS 4 REHTAEH.... 2 years..... and all the folks who r suffering.... we must do better... please... and our troops and PTSD... O God this must get better.
Mercy for mentally ill begins at grave
August 9, 2013 - 4:56pm By DAN LETT
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1146853-mercy-for-mentally-ill-begins-at-grave
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PAEDOPHILE HUNTING/ PAEDOPHILE HUNTING
Spanish paedophile pardon was 'admin error'
Updated: 06 Aug 2013 09:43 GMT+02:00
The convicted paedophile arrested by Spanish police on Monday after his pardon was revoked by Morocco's King Mohamed VI was originally supposed repatriated to a Spanish prison and not released, sources have told the news agency AFP.
and..
Fresh protests in Morocco over paedophile pardon - Yahoo! News ...
4 days ago - Protesters chant slogans during a demonstration on August 5, 2013, ... the king's pardon of a convicted Spanish paedophile and demand more ...
and... canada
Christie Blatchford: Gordon Stuckless’s ‘chemical castration’ lost in details of pedophilia case
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/06/27/christie-blatchford-gordon-stucklesss-chemical-castration-lost-in-details-of-pedophilia-case/
AND..
Maple Leaf Gardens molester faces dangerous offender status
By Sam Pazzano ,Toronto Sun
First posted: Thursday, August 08, 2013 01:40 PM EDT | Updated: Thursday, August 08, 2013 08:41 PM EDT
Gordon Stuckless Gordon Stuckless leaves 52 Division on March 22, 2013. (DAVE THOMAS/Toronto Sun)
•Charges keep piling up for Gordon Stuckless
•Theo Fleury helped change society's view of child sex abuse victims
•Stuckless 'extremely law-abiding' since release, lawyer says as more historic charges laid
•Gordon Stuckless released on $1,000 bail on new York Region sex charges
•Gordon Stuckless victim: 'There is no closure'
•Crown warning on Gordon Stuckless: 'This may be the tip of the iceberg'
•Maple Leaf Gardens perv Gordon Stuckless faces new sex charges
TORONTO - Convicted Maple Leaf Gardens sex offender Gordon Stuckless was slapped with 26 additional charges and is now eyeing the prospect of an indefinite prison sentence, his lawyer told reporters Thursday.
Stuckless, 64, is now facing 98 sex-related charges -- up from 72 at his last court appearance -- involving seven complainants from York Region and 10 from Toronto in allegations spanning from 1965 through 1985.
"The Crown has nobly advised it will be seeking a dangerous offender application if he is convicted," Stuckless' lawyer, Ari Goldkind, told media on the steps of Old City Hall court.
"Dangerous offenders almost always spend the rest of their lives in prison. But it is a sanction reserved for criminals who pose a menace to society today," Goldkind said. "(Stuckless) has led an exemplary life since his prison term ended.
"Since his release 13 years ago, he's been an extremely law-abiding citizen. All of these (alleged) crime predate the time when he was sentenced for his Gardens offences," his lawyer said.
Stuckless is free on bail and living under house arrest, but didn't show up to the court appearance.
The former Gardens usher and equipment manager was convicted in 1997 and received two years less a day and chemical castration for sex assaults on 24 boys between 1969 and 1988.
The Ontario Court of Appeal upped that sentence to five years, but Stuckless only served two-thirds of the time before being released in 2001.
More than a year before he admitted his Gardens crimes, Stuckless pleaded guilty in March 1996 in Newmarket to sexually assaulting five Baythorn pupils and three other boys between Jan. 1, 1978, and Dec. 31, 1987, and received a 14-month sentence with one year probation.
Stuckless has already confessed to molesting 32 boys so far.
The new charges allege that Stuckless molested these 17 boys, who were nine to 14 years old. Stuckless met them while he was serving as a teaching assistant at schools or coach at minor sports in Toronto, Thornhill and Oak Ridges.
He is now facing 37 counts of indecent assault, 48 counts of gross indecency, three counts of buggery, eight counts of sexual assault, one assault count and a single count of possessing a weapon.
A five-week preliminary hearing is scheduled to begin April 22, Goldkind said.
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Call for submissions – child safe institutions
AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse today released its third issues paper and is inviting the public to contribute ideas and expertise on the best ways to create child safe institutions.
Royal Commission CEO Janette Dines said a child safe institution is one that actively protects children and young people from sexual abuse in an institution.
"The Royal Commission wants to hear from a wide range of interested people, as well as government and non-government organisations, about what makes a child safe institution," said Ms Dines.
"The Royal Commission is examining what organisational policies and practices – like codes of conduct, complaint handling procedures, and recruitment and supervision processes for staff and volunteers – are the most effective at reducing risks to children and keeping them safer in institutions."
AND..
Calls to rape hotlines up after Rabbi Elon conviction
ISRAEL
Jerusalem Post
By DANIELLE ZIRI
08/09/2013
Crisis center head: Ruling of "immense importance in breaking silence surrounding... sexual assault in the religious community."
The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel reported a significant increase Thursday in the number of calls to its hotlines for religious men and women, following the Wednesday conviction of Rabbi Mordechai Elon for indecent assault by force against a minor.
The association also stated this week that it wished to strengthen victims of sexual assault who chose to speak out about the events.
Orit Sulitzeanu, the association’s director-general, said in a statement that the court ruling was of "immense importance in breaking the silence surrounding the phenomenon of sexual assault in the religious community."
"We know that the sense of guilt and shame that accompanies sexual abuse victims prevents women and men affected [from seeking] help or to complain," she added. "We hope that all victims feel better thanks to this court decision and that people will understand that justice always ends up coming to light."
AND..
IRELAND
We must never forget terror of industrial schools
IRELAND
Irish Times
Looking back, it was one incident that summed up the whole story.
In 1976, Mavis Arnold and I were interviewing a jittery Department of Education civil servant responsible for what had been industrial schools.
Our focus was on the institution run by the Sisters of the Poor Clares in Cavan.
We asked to see examples of the institution’s "dietary" plan and of a notification of punishment, both required by the 1908 Children Act.
Not available, he replied.
What about children sent out to work from the age of 10 in the early 1960s?
"You can’t see individual confidential reports."
Could we see the accounts?
They didn’t exist.
By what process, we asked, had some Cavan girls been sent to the laundry-reformatory in Gloucester Street, Dublin?
His agitation increased: "We’d better not delve into that terrain."
The point was that that institution, run by other nuns, was not certificated, thus the girls’ incarceration there was contrary to the rules of the Act governing the schools.
Posted by Kathy Shaw at 8:08 AM
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ONE BILLION RISING-SHANIA TWAIN- breaking the chains of abuse...
IDLE NO MORE CANADA- Shania Twain was adopted by her stepfather Ojibway Jerry Twain and grew up on the reserve as non-status indian.... Shania always said Jerry Twain (and she adored Grandpa Twain) treated respectfully and loved Shania's mother Sharon so much..
..... but Shania said the enormous abuse among the Reservations should shame all of Canada.... and men need counselling and respect as much as women...
Shania Twain - Black Eyes, Blue Tears - Live!
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CANADIAN PURE- Classified- OFFICAL VIDEO- 3 Foot tall- MEN BREAKING CHAINS OF ABUSE
ONE BILLION RISING- breaking the chains of abuse and bullying- CHECK OUT- MEN breaking the chains of abuse- bullying - KIDS STAND AGAINST BULLYING-
VIBE Premiere: Classified '3 Foot Tall' Video
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=641632725854753&set=a.153203521364345.32932.100000240949070&type=1&theater
CHECK OUT- breaking the chains of abuse- CLASSIFIED'S NEW VIEW 3foot tall- MEN BREAKING THE CHAINS
OH MY GOD.... CLASSISIFIED HAS THE BEST BULLY AND VICTORY OVER VIOLENCE OF GIRLS AND WOMEN VIDEO E-VA- Break the chains of abuse
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NOVA SCOTIA- $$$$$ SEXUAL ASSAULT AND VIOLENCE FUNDING
$200k to fight sex assault, violence
Requests up after Rehtaeh Parsons case
SELENA ROSS STAFF REPORTER
sross@herald.ca @CH-sross
Some regions of Nova Scotia have no sexual assault services whatsoever, but $200,000 of provincial funding announced Monday will go toward organizations working on thos e gaps.
"We need to make sure survivors and their families can get the help they need no matter where they live," said Marilyn More, minister responsible for the Status of Women, in a news release.
In an event at the Mi’kmaq Native Friendship Centre in Halifax, More said she knows it’s "baby steps," but the time is right to keep people brainstorming about the problem.
"I have to say, I’ve never been so struck by the collective will of Nova Scotians" to address sexual violence than over the past three months, since the death o f 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons, said More.
The province is putting $1.1 million in total toward sexual assault services. The first instalment of $200,000 was offered May 1 as emergency funding to help organizations meet a spike in demand for sexual assault services after Rehtaeh’s death.
Another round of funding — $700,000 — will arrive in the fall after the organizations have a chance to work on their ideas.
This round of funding will be divided among 13 organizations in Sheet Harbour, Sydney, New Glasgow, Yarmouth, Truro, Antigonish, Eskasoni, Kentville and the Halifax area.
The recipients needed to demonstrate that they would use the money to increase collaboration and be "a catalyst" for new services in their area, said More.
"Every region of the province is in a different place, so we want to be fairly open-minded and see what different communities need to move on to that next step," she said.
"Not that we don’t want to be accountable for the money, but we don’t want to penalize an area because they’ve never had a chance to work together whereas another region of the province might have been working on some of these issues together for 20 years."
The grants range from $4,000 to the Spryfield YWCA to $38,000 to the Legal Information Society of Nova Scotia, based in Halifax.
One recipient of a mid-range grant is the New Start Society, which offers counselling to men who have been violent to intimate par tners.
Its grant of $11,240 will be jointly used by programs in Dartmouth, Truro and Colchester County, said social worker Wendy Keen, director of New Start Couns elling .
"We can now work with men who come to our organizations for counselling who are also disclosing that they have been sexually abused and traumatized as young boys or youth," she said.
Staff will be trained and, in a few months, they will know how they might integrate that work into their general practice in the long term, said Keen.
The Avalon Sexual Assault Centre in Halifax will receive $ 22,000.
The centre also received $100,000 in May in emergency funding, and it’s still seeing significantly higher demand than usual, said director Irene Smith.
This is the first time a Nova Scotia government has funded this kind of collaboration on sexual assault, and the plan represents the largest infusion of provincial cash toward the problem, said Mo re.
She was asked how she felt about the fact a death pushed the province to act .
"I feel terrible," she said.
"I’m one of the people that’s been working mostly through the community but als o through government on these issues for most of my life. So I’m not going to defend the status quo or what has or has not happ ened, but this is our opportunity to change things."
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NATO MILITARY FORCES STEPPING UP- behave or get out..... it matters- and so does honour
Chief of Army message regarding unacceptable behaviour
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaqpoeVgr8U
CARTOON
GOD IS LAUGHING- Westboro Baptist hate on r troops- especially those KIA- they r the Jane Fonda and John Kerry of our Vietnam- Burn Baby Burn
They r before the devil with their signs: God hates fags! You're going to hell! Thank God 4 dead soldiers! and the devils laughs and says: "AS IT TURNS OUT, GOD ACTUALLY HATES SMALL MINDED BIGOTED, BLIND FANATICS....
http://www.myspace.com/my/photos/photo/71844205/Album
GOD ROARS WITH LAUGHTER-so do we -Westboro Baptist Church neighbour paints house in gay pride-God bless our troops - and all the families who mourn those waiting on us
http://www.myspace.com/my/photos/photo/71844208/Album
=======================
BONO AND BIG STARS MUST STOP HARRASSING THE WORLD'S POOR WHO GIVE THEIR LAST $$$ OF THE MONTH 2 SEE U LIVE AND LOVE-IN UR MUSIC.... shame Bono.... Scotland nailed u right...... check out the global homeless and jobless in Civilized nations!!!!!- and u all have ur $$$$ billions.
and some pictures of the 'nada, nada, nada' United Nastions has done 4 the world's poor ...
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/08/oh-bono-how-cld-u-dont-u-big-time-stars.html
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The Wolves
CANADA, UNITED STATES, MEXICO, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND- GLOBAL FIRST PEOPLES NATIONS NEED 2 STEP UP.... NOT.... JUST.... CANADA
UN to investigate Canada's treatment of Aboriginal Peoples
Jessica Hume, Parliamentary Bureau
OTTAWA - Another United Nations envoy is headed for Canada to check up on us, and this time it will focus on the country's the treatment of Aboriginal Peoples.
Last year it was the UN's special envoy on food security, and Olivier De Schutter -- the UN special rapporteur on the right to food -- wasn't impressed. He concluded that Canada's "self-righteous" attitude belies a very real issue of food insecurity.
The report was widely dismissed and literally laughed at by Conservative cabinet ministers.
Though the relationship between Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government and the UN has been strained, Canada has granted permission for this latest special envoy, which will make three trips here and produce three reports on what it finds.
A spokesperson for Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt said the government continues "to take action on important issues like matrimonial real property protection for First Nations on reserve, education, economic development, housing, child and family services and access to safe drinking water."
"We look forward to the opportunity to talk about the steps we're taking," said Erica Meekes.
NDP aboriginal affairs critic Jean Crowder said her party welcomes the envoy and said examination of "Canada's record on violence against aboriginal women and children, unequal access to education, lack of services for child welfare and the state of housing" is needed.
She said she hopes "this time Conservatives will work co-operatively with (the special rapporteur)."
The visits could also provide opportunities for the NDP to renew its calls for an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women, though Crowder confirmed no such actions.
comment:
i'm a Indian and I agree with you. I don't need the U.N in my corner
COMMENT:
More money spent on first class air fares, five star hotels, limo service, steak & lobster and expensive wine that will amount to absolutely nothing. Another fine example of socialist utopia at work. The UN can kiss my redneck azz!
COMMENT:
It was the UN and other countries that shamed Canada to finally signing a document that said Canada will recognise aboriginal rights, it took over 30 years since the creation of that document for canada to finally agree that we have rights, Canada and two other countries were the only ones that refused to sign, and canada was the last to sign.
COMMENT:
Mr. Winters, I think you should quit snivelling and give it a rest. The Natives in Canada are given far more opportunity to be successful than the average white person that ends up paying for it. Aboriginal people have been spoon fed for far too long, and it is time you get weaned off of the public teat and start earning a living like everyone else.
COMMENT:
What are you blabbing about. If it wasn't for the huge resurses stolen from Native people YOU PEOPLE would be starving, and I am not a native to say that. I am one of the hard working non-colonial immigrants who built this country ! Have some respect for the Native People, will you !!! This is their country , not yours.
http://www.torontosun.com/2013/08/10/un-to-investigate-canadas-treatment-of-aboriginal-peoples
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Top United Nations expert James Anaya urges nations to honour treaties with indigenous peoples
By Michael Woods, Postmedia News August 9, 2013
Prof. James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, speaks during a press conference on June 18, 2010, in Guatemala City.
Photograph by: Johan Ordonez/AFP-Getty Images/Files , Postmedia News
OTTAWA — A top United Nations expert on indigenous rights is calling on countries across the world to honour treaties with indigenous peoples, saying doing so is a crucial part of addressing historical wrongs and moving toward reconciliation.
Prof. James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, didn’t specifically mention Canada, but his remarks come as treaty talks between the Harper government and First Nations leaders appear to be making little headway.
"Full respect for treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements is a crucial element in advancing toward reconciliation with indigenous peoples," Anaya said in a statement Friday to mark the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. "Broken treaties must become a thing of the past."
Anaya also said he will make an official visit to Canada from Oct. 12 to 20, permission for which he had been requesting since February 2012. UN rapporteurs must have the consent of member countries to make official visits.
High-level talks on treaty implementation were a major commitment of a meeting in January between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and First Nations leaders at the height of the indigenous Idle No More protests. Aboriginal leaders have long called for nation-to-nation talks to implement and enforce treaties signed between the Crown and First Nations.
But while talks on comprehensive claims (modern-day treaties) have progressed well since then, the treaty implementation talks have lagged. At Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo’s only meeting with Harper since January – it came almost six months later, in June – he hand-delivered a letter from Saskatchewan Regional Chief Perry Bellegarde, the AFN’s point man on treaties, asking for clarity on the authority and mandate of a joint senior oversight committee on treaty implementation.
Bellegarde said Friday he has yet to receive a response from the prime minister, but hopes to receive one "any day now."
"We want to see the confirmation in writing about the commitment to treaty implementation and treaty enforcement … treaty by treaty, nation by nation," he said. "Once we see that, let’s get the process underway."
A spokesperson for Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt said the government is committed to improving the relationships stemming from historic treaties. "Treaty work is ongoing with the Assembly of First Nations to achieve key priorities for Canada and Treaty First Nations," said spokesperson Erica Meekes.
While the treaty relationship between First Nations and the Crown is supposed to be one of peaceful coexistence in which people mutually share and benefit from land and resource wealth, it has instead been one-sided, Bellegarde said.
"You see one side — the non-indigenous side — reaping all the benefits of the land and resources, and what you see on our side is poverty. That’s not what the spirit and intent of those treaty relationships was meant to be."
Honouring treaties would involve, among other things, a new fiscal relationship between First Nations and the federal government, Bellegarde said.
To accomplish this, Bellegarde has floated the idea of a new federal "Canada-First Nations relations" department with a broader mandate than that of the current Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. He has also suggested establishing an independent treaty commissioner with the authority to negotiate the implementation and enforcement of treaties.
The aim of Anaya’s visit is to examine the human rights situation of Canada’s indigenous population.
"The Special Rapporteur will hold meetings and consultations with government officials, as well as with indigenous nations and their representatives in various locations," a UN statement said. Anaya wasn’t available for an interview on Friday.
He will then file a report, the first version of which will be submitted to Canada for its comments. The final version will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Special rapporteurs aren’t always treated warmly in Canada. Last year, the Harper government condemned the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, after he decried Canada as having a "self-righteous" attitude towards hunger and poverty.
But First Nations leaders across the country have expressed optimism about Anaya’s visit. Atleo has said the visit will "hold up a mirror" to Canada regarding its treatment of indigenous peoples.
Bellegarde expressed similar sentiments on Friday.
"We look forward to his visit," he said. "Anytime you can bring awareness to other countries of the world about Canada’s lack of recognition, enforcement and implementation of treaties, it’s a useful tool."
Indigenous peoples’ right to recognition and enforcement of treaties is recognized in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which notes such rights are "the basis for a strengthened partnership between indigenous peoples and states."
The Harper government endorsed the declaration in 2010, but noted at the time it’s not legally binding. In June, Valcourt called the declaration an "aspirational document" in an interview with Postmedia News.
mwoods@postmedia.com
twitter.com/michaelrwoods
http://www.canada.com/life/United+Nations+expert+James+Anaya+urges+nations+honour+treaties/8770753/story.html
COMMENT:
Kevin OConnor · Top Commenter · Busker at Self Employed (Business)
Don't forget the part about the Indian Chiefs living in obcene wealth while the individual tribesmen live in abject poverty , and then when you ask where did the 10 million or so go that was meant to fix this , they scream at you for interfering in their affairs.
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One of my favourite stations of all time APTN Canada
Aboriginal Peoples Television Network’s licence renewed by CRTC
By Michael Woods, Postmedia News
APTN has covered major news items such as Idle No More protests.
Photograph by: Julie Oliver/Postmedia News , Postmedia News
OTTAWA — Canada’s only broadcaster devoted to aboriginal programming will remain on television, after the country’s broadcast regulator said it will keep its guaranteed placement on basic cable.
On Thursday, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) renewed the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network’s mandatory carriage licence for another five years.
The decision means that APTN, devoted to "providing a positive window on Aboriginal life for all Canadians," keeps its coveted spot on basic cable television, and the guaranteed funding that comes with it.
The concern was that if APTN lost its guaranteed cable placement and the money that comes from it — which accounts for most of its $38-million budget — it would have lost much of its subscriber base and been reduced to a shadow of its former self.
"It would have been very difficult for us to meet the mandate of the network to produce original programming for the original people of this land, because we just wouldn’t have had the money to do it," APTN CEO Jean Larose said. "The impact would have been tremendous on us."
APTN provides programming in English, French and 30 different aboriginal languages and dialects, which "reflects the attitudes, opinions, ideas, values and artistic creativity of Aboriginal peoples, which would otherwise not be seen on television," the CRTC said in its decision.
"As the only television channel by and for Aboriginal peoples of Canada, APTN is exceptional in its contribution to Canadian expression, cultural sovereignty and regional reflection," the ruling said.
However, the network fell short in its request for a 15-cent increase in subscriber fees. The network asked for an increase from 25 cents to 40 cents per subscriber. On Thursday, the CRTC granted it a 31-cent subscription fee per household.
"That increase isn’t what we hoped for based on the plans we had, but it will certainly allow us to maintain the network at a somewhat comparable level as what it’s been doing in the past few years."
Those ambitious plans included creating more original online programming to target a younger audience, and running more community outreach events. Larose said it was apparent at hearings earlier this year that the commission wasn’t interested in granting money for those purposes. But he said the CRTC recognized the vast community support for keeping APTN at its current level.
More than 800 interventions were filed to the CRTC in response to APTN’s application in a five-week consultation window earlier this year.
The CRTC said a "large majority of the interventions were in support, including those from Aboriginal persons, organizations and production companies."
The CRTC’s decision also noted that APTN is the only outlet for most of Canada’s independent Aboriginal production industry.
Despite Thursday’s victory, the network may be hard-pressed to maintain its level of original programming, due to potential difficulties in keeping up with rising costs. For example, its licence renewal comes with more onerous requirements regarding closed captioning and described video. And earlier this year, much of its funding from the Canada Media Fund was slashed.
But Larose said the CRTC made "the best decision that they could make under the circumstances.
"We’re happy with the result."
On Thursday, the CRTC granted mandatory distribution to three new services. It denied mandatory carriage to a number of new applicants, including Sun News Network.
mwoods@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/michaelrwoods
http://www.canada.com/news/national/Aboriginal+Peoples+Television+Network+licence+renewed+CRTC/8763987/story.html
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Back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s many of us got involved because FIRST PEOPLES WOMEN LOST THEIR STATUS IF MARRIED OUTSIDE THEIR TRIBE... AND ALL THEIR RIGHTS... WHILST FIRST PEOPLES MEN DID NOT....... which meant all the children suffered of First Nations, Inuit, Metis..... and if a First Nations woman married white etc.... were totally thrown out..... First Nations men were not.....
ONE BILLION RISING- breaking the chains.... of abuse...... it takes 4ever 2 get rights 4 women even among our own First Peoples within their own....imho
Aboriginal divorce rules 'missed the mark'
First Nations want their own laws
By Christopher Curtis, Postmedia News
Grand Chief Mike Delisle of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake has misgivings about Ottawa's Bill S-2: Family Homes on Reserves &
Photograph by: Marcos Townsend, Postmedia News , Postmedia News
Until recently, aboriginal divorce existed in a kind of legal purgatory.
Because family courts are governed by the provinces and aboriginal territory falls under federal jurisdiction, there was a legislative gap that failed to address what happens to homes on First Nations reserves during a divorce. It allowed for a system in which indigenous women in particular were left with little to no legal recourse in the event they were bilked out of shared property in the aftermath of a messy divorce.
In June, the federal government looked to bridge that gap when it passed Bill S-2: Family Homes on Reserves & Matrimonial Interests or Rights. The law offers First Nations the choice of following a set of federal divorce rules or amending the legislation to suit their customs.
But aboriginal advocates say the bill creates a situation where non-aboriginals could wind up owning houses on First Nations territory. They also claim S-2 makes it nearly impossible for communities to draft their own laws and some territories, including the South Shore Kahnawake reserve, say they'll simply ignore the bill and enact their own version of it.
"The federal government missed the mark on this one," said Mike Delisle, grand chief of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake. "There's a lot of concern, not the least of which is the lack of consultation with this law. There's definitely a problem with the division of property after divorce on First Nations, but the solution has to come from us and not from Ottawa."
The Mohawk council will hold a community meeting later this year to begin the process of creating their own divorce laws - much like the Six Nations Mohawk community did in Ontario in November 2012.
"In the case of someone who 'marries out,' (marries a non-band member) and
then there's a divorce, what happens to the home?" Delisle said. "We've already had situations where the home ends up belonging to a non-Native man or woman. If this becomes codified into law, there's a real risk for us here."
Before the bill was passed, there were situations where judges wouldn't overstep their jurisdiction and simply refused to provide a ruling on aboriginal divorces, according to Mohawk lawyer Paula Hill. She says that, in the worst cases, a person could wind up without any kind of compensation for the home or land they lost in a divorce.
"Often times, separation or divorce can bring out the beast in even the most reasonable person," said Hill, who oversaw the creation of the Six Nations' Law Concerning Matrimonial Real Property. "In high-conflict families, the property issue simply remained unresolved, with no judicial option available to seek recourse or to assist in mediating.
Specifically at Six Nations, what we would often see is that these homes would be abandoned. Unfortunately, in the highest conflicts, where there's absolute resistance against being reasonable, the home is often not even rented out where profits could be shared."
Hill is currently establishing an arbitration process that would be overseen by members of different Iroquois communities in Ontario and Quebec. When the process is in place, Six Nations Mohawks won't have to go to an outside court to settle the division of property during a separation.
Although Bill S-2 allows for individual communities to amend federal divorce law, Hill says the requirements to make those changes are unrealistic at best. The law states that 25 per cent of the band's eligible voters must be in favour of the amendments, but even that poses complications. For starters, about 60 per cent of Canada's aboriginal population does not live on reserve and would not be affected by S-2. There are also people within First Nations territory who simply refuse to participate in band council politics because they see it as an extension of the federal government.
"To suggest that we must somehow contact all of these band members and coerce them to vote on a law that absolutely will not impact them is incomprehensible," Hill said. "Aboriginal self-government is a scary word to most Canadians, I understand that. But believe me, it is very scary to us as well. However, if we ever expect to solve Canada's 'Indian Problem' we absolutely must allow the answers to start coming from the nations that suffer through those problems."
Bill S-2 wasn't always so controversial. For a time, the law enjoyed support from the Native Women's Association of Canada, but their enthusiasm for the bill has since waned. In a report issued by NWAC in 2011, the organization's lawyer said S-2 was "inconsistent with the values of First Nations."
Particularly, NWAC felt the law wasn't drafted to consider the plight of aboriginal women who have to flee their reserves to escape conjugal violence - a situation that affects aboriginals at a rate three times higher than non-aboriginal women.
They also took issue with the fact that while the new law may give individual band councils more governing responsibility, it does not come with additional funding to administer those new functions.
The Regina Leader-Post
http://www.canada.com/life/Aboriginal+divorce+rules+missed+mark/8751819/story.html
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First Nations stand between Canada-China agreement
Ottawa 'failed to consult' on China trade deal, First Nation says
By Susana Mas, CBC News
Last Updated: Aug 11, 2013 9:30 AM ET
A legal challenge filed in a federal court by the Hupacasath First Nation in B.C. is standing in the way of the Canadian government ratifying a controversial investment treaty with China, says a member of the small B.C. community.
The federal government was swift to sign a Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement with China last September, but it cannot take effect until it has been ratified by both sides.
Brenda Sayers, a member of the Hupacasath First Nations, told CBC News the federal government agreed to "hold off on the ratification until due process took place in court."
The Hupacasath First Nation is located in Port Alberni, B.C., and consists of approximately 300 members across five reserves.
The small First Nations community argued in federal court in June that the federal government is required to consult First Nations under Section 35 of the Constitution Act, which provides constitutional protection to the aboriginal and treaty rights of aboriginal peoples in Canada.
According to Sayers, if the investment treaty is ratified, Chinese investors would have control over major assets such as coal on its 232,000-hectare territory.
The extraction of resources by foreign firms would strip negotiating powers for First Nations, which are involved in the treaty process.
"We are saying that the federal government failed to consult," Sayers said.
But lawyers for the federal government argued that a duty to consult does not apply in this case.
A spokesman for International Trade Minister Ed Fast told CBC News in a written statement, "the FIPA contains the exceptions found in our other treaties that preserve policy flexibility for certain sectors and activities, including rights or preferences provided to aboriginal peoples."
"Furthermore, the Canada-China FIPA, like Canada's other FIPAs, provides a policy carve-out for government measures concerning rights or preferences provided to aboriginal peoples," said Rudy Husny, the spokesman for the minister of international trade.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/08/09/pol-fipa-with-china-first-nations-rally-ottawa.html
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u make us so proud- u fight so hard 4 our basic freedoms- pray we are worthy of each of u and all those with God waiting on us
Proud Canadian Soldier
CANADIAN SOLDIER- AFGHANISTAN- 2009- We remember- thx Mattnew Worth 4 the share darlin
The Life [And Death] Of Erin Doyle
March 7, 2009 by Adam Day
Master Corporal Erin Doyle on patrol near Haji Beach, Afghanistan, in April 2008.
PHOTO: ADAM DAY
"He died pulling the trigger. He died screaming into the face of the enemy."
March 7, 2009 by Adam Day
Master Corporal Erin Doyle on patrol near Haji Beach, Afghanistan, in April 2008.
PHOTO: ADAM DAY
"He died pulling the trigger. He died screaming into the face of the enemy."
http://legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/2009/03/the-life-and-death-of-erin-doyle/
The Canadian army has a policy on facial hair. Moustaches are OK, but beards are pretty much forbidden without medical cause and even then growing anything longer than the allowed one inch is a sure way to bring a crusty sergeant major down on your own personal head.
It is called a ‘jacking.’ And it’s what happens in the Canadian Forces when a superior officer has some kind of issue with you, or with your beard.
Master Corporal Erin Doyle was not worried about getting jacked. He was, in fact, legendarily unworried about getting jacked. He may have been, to be honest, the least jacking-averse soldier in the entire CF.
Seriously, he seemed to like getting jacked. It didn’t really matter what the rank was doing the jacking, either, from sergeant to colonel, Doyle was as unworried about rank as he was about getting in trouble. I met Doyle, who was with the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, a couple of times in Panjwai in April 2008 and he made a singular—sort of scary—impression.
Doyle was a tattooed and wildly-bearded giant. He had the unmistakable swagger of a man for whom solid rules were mere suggestions. He had a way of leaning into a stare that could make anyone nervous. Hell, he didn’t just look at you, he estimated you. It was a look that seemed to leave everyone, even officers, feeling a little less than certain. It was an interesting effect, and I’m not sure where he learned it, some kind of finishing school for outlaws maybe.
The first time I saw him, he was quite literally presiding over a meeting between two sets of patrol leaders—one captain and one sergeant—during a long and arduous hike in the deep outback of western Panjwai.
Doyle in Afghanistan in 2008. [PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE]
PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE
The captain and sergeant would make plans, then kind of quietly look up at Doyle. With a headshake and a grunt, he’d torpedo their idea and they’d go back to the map. This went on for half an hour or more, as gunfire and explosions rippled overhead. With his rank obscured by his gear—his battle rattle—I assumed he was a warrant officer or maybe the company sergeant major, based solely on the deference and respect he received from the other soldiers, many of whom I knew to be cynics of the first order.
When the planning conference broke up, I hurried to get up to where Doyle was, figuring I was better off standing near him than anywhere else. "This is bullshit," Doyle growled at me as the two patrols finally moved off in the direction of the police substation at Zangabad, where he was then stationed. "Somebody thinks it’s a live-fire patrol exercise out here—on a two-way range."
He had a point. There was patrolling with intent to achieve a tactical purpose and then there was walking in circles in brain-shrinking heat simply to prolong the patrol to its preordained length. This was now clearly the latter. "What’s that patch mean?" I asked him as we walked, pointing at the symbol on his shoulder that featured the text ‘20%’.
Doyle explained that during a pre-deployment speech, the sergeant major complained that 100 per cent of the problems in their unit were caused by 20 per cent of the soldiers. He said it in a much more profane way than that, however.
Some guys, I thought, would hear that speech and silently tick off the troublemakers in his mind, some would smile inside knowing they may well belong to that club, some would embrace it by smiling openly and calling themselves a 20 per center, and then some, probably a very few, maybe only one, would go out and get 20 per cent patches made and have his whole platoon wear them into combat.
That last guy—that was Doyle.
But there was way more to him than just being a badass among badasses, as I learned the second time I met him a few days later. Not only was he the most impossibly polite outlaw you could imagine, being friendly to even outcast journalists, but the respect with which everyone treated him turned out to have an incredibly strong and undeniable basis in fact.
On that day in late April, Doyle and his section had patrolled several hours down to Police Substation Haji—the place where he was eventually killed—in order to take over for another section that was being pulled out of the field.
Doyle in Afghanistan in 2008. [PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE]
Doyle in Afghanistan in 2008.
PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE
The enemy, nothing if not superbly unpredictable, chose to attack at the moment when more than 200 coalition soldiers were converging on Haji. In the resultant chaos, Doyle and his section were ordered to load the withdrawing platoon’s massive pile of equipment onto a truck while the rest of the convoy lay pretty much belly up in a sandstorm on the Arghandab riverbed.
Now, we’ve all moved heavy boxes before and it’s not exactly fun. Doyle was already sick—with Afghan hanta virus, as he called it—but that didn’t stop him. He jumped up and moved boxes with his troops. And he moved them way past the point where any normal person would have stopped. He moved them until he nearly died.
No, really. I’m not just saying that. He moved boxes until he passed out and his vital signs got so bad the medic came over the radio saying he was unsure if Doyle would live and requested an emergency nine-liner medevac back to Kandahar Airfield.
No one who knew Doyle is surprised by this story. Troops were in danger so he pushed past all of the body’s normal warning signs because a job had to be done. It’s just what it was.
Doyle made it back to Kandahar and with the help of a tasty intravenous buffet, he survived the day. He would not survive the war.
Numberless Are the Dead
Numbers are numbers, they tell you something but it’s probably nothing vital. There is no code hidden in the numbers, nothing to tell you whether the war was just or if the man was loved or what life now feels like for the people he left behind.
Nonetheless, maybe big digits do tell some kind of story too, so here are some rough numbers. Doyle was the 90th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan since 2002. And he was approximately the 2,100th Canadian to die in the service of his country since the end of the Second World War, and very nearly the 118,000th soldier to have his name listed in the official Books of Remembrance since Canada first sent armed men overseas in 1884 to fight alongside the British in Sudan.
Beyond the numbers stands the other story. It’s Doyle’s story. And even more, it is the story of his wife Nicole, his friends and comrades and the unimaginable cost of losing someone—one man—at war. These are the people whose world changed when Doyle died. And it’s not now a better world.
Doyle with M.Cpl. Matt Yaschuk. [PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE]
Doyle with M.Cpl. Matt Yaschuk.
PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE
The news comes quickly
The way they still speak about him in the present tense is one of the things you’ll notice if you talk to his friends.
Master Corporal Matt Yaschuk, one of Doyle’s best friends, is not the kind of guy who normally sits down for interviews with journalists, you can tell just by looking at him.
But yet, on a freezing cold December day in Edmonton, he sat patiently, waiting for me, wearing a blue plaid jacket and a toque, his hugely muscled arms protectively cuddling a little Tim Hortons coffee.
Yaschuk was in the 3rd Bn. with Doyle, same company, and had been for years. The two of them had been through a lot together. From Bosnia in 2000 to Kabul in 2004, they’d seen pretty much everything.
Yaschuk was at Forward Operating Base Sperwan Ghar, sleeping in on that early morning in August when Doyle’s section of about 10 guys—at that time holding the Haji base all on their own—came under attack.
Normally when a soldier is killed, the news is spread out to the unit all at once, as soon as possible. But in this case, because everybody knew Doyle and Yaschuk were so tight, he was told first. "A warrant officer came in and woke me up," said Yaschuk. "He just asked me to come with him. And I knew there was a contact going on because I could hear the guns firing, but there’s always contact, rounds going out all the time, so you get used to that."
The warrant officer took Yaschuk outside and told him Doyle was dead, and that the fight was still going on. "He told me that Erin was killed. And then I felt like shit," said Yaschuk sternly, with something that seemed stronger than reluctance. "I just lost one of my best friends and there’s not much you could do. He’s out there and you’re in here. You wish that you were out there with him."
Yaschuk was among the first of Doyle’s close friends and family to hear of his death. Many others still hadn’t heard, like Nicole, his wife of 11 years, or his daughter Zarine or his many friends or the rest of Canada, even.
It didn’t take long for Yaschuk’s higher-ups to tell him he would be going back to Kandahar with Doyle in order to follow his coffin up the ramp of the Hercules and escort his body back to Canada. "I was happy I was going with him. It’s the biggest honour I’ve ever had in my life," said Yaschuk, looking down at his coffee. "But at the same time, I was pretty broken."
Yaschuk and Doyle rode on the Hercules back to Camp Mirage, a nearby Canadian base, before transferring to a Canadian Airbus for the flight back to Trenton.
He remembers sitting quietly those many long hours, separated from Doyle by a draped curtain.
Waiting for Doyle and Yaschuk on the tarmac in Trenton alongside Nicole and Zarine were two other members of the tight 3rd Bn. crew, M.Cpl. Gerry Fraser and M.Cpl. Kevin Nanson, both of whom had been on this tour with Doyle only to be seriously injured and evacuated to Canada.
Not incidentally, many who witnessed the scene believe Doyle probably saved Nanson’s life after the improvised explosive device strike in which Nanson was so badly injured, but more on that later.
"It was emotional," remembered Yaschuk. "Very emotional. Especially with Gerry being hurt."
Fraser had been repatriated after suffering major injuries in a vehicle accident in Kandahar City.
Kandahar, 2002. [PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE]
Kandahar, 2002.
PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE
The three—Yaschuk, Nanson and Fraser—remember standing together on the tarmac in Trenton when all of a sudden it seemed like their endlessly mischievous friend Doyle was still with them.
See, Doyle used to love pranks. Whether it was duct-taping rotten yogurt to a guy’s locker or sending truly illicit emails from a friend’s accidentally left-open account, Doyle could always be counted on to cause trouble.
So, when Chief of Defence Staff General Walter Natynczyk approached the trio and said, quietly, conspiratorially, "Would it mean anything at all if I said to you ‘Hey ——!"
What Natynczyk said will forever remain a mystery to all but those who knew Doyle, but it may be enough to say that it was Erin’s favourite politically incorrect greeting.
The trio just shook their heads and laughed. It was as if Doyle had gotten them yet again, in the most unlikely way possible.
What had actually happened was that Natynczyk had asked Nicole if there was anything at all he could do for her, and she figured the boys could use a good laugh, so she put him up to it.
Nicole and Erin
Nicole Doyle doesn’t let many people call her Nick, and if you try for ‘Nicky’ you’d better have some sort of armour-plating system to protect your softer organs from attack.
Nicole is in the forces too. Currently a corporal in the air force, she’s been to Afghanistan before and she’s going back again.
Beyond that, she seems to share something way down inside with Erin: a love of mischief with a hard edge, impatience with weakness and a strict policy of never ever abiding fools.
Nicole and Erin in Bosnia. [PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE]
Nicole and Erin in Bosnia.
PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE
During my second interview with Nicole, I asked her a question that I’d already asked a few days earlier, Nicole glanced over, then down at the ground. "You suck," she said quietly. "You already know that answer."
She was right, of course.
The issue of when Nicole and Erin first met isn’t all that easy to resolve, but they were definitely married on April 25, 1997. (I know this for sure because I asked this question twice.)
When Nicole was young, she moved out near the Westsyde area of Kamloops, B.C.
She remembers her school bus would stop on Dairy Road and pickup this red-headed kid who was always acting boisterous and wild. Later, Nicole remembers watching the same redheaded kid play football at Westsyde Secondary School.
After school was done, Nicole joined the Rocky Mountain Rangers reserve unit in Kamloops and it was there she and Erin, well, got married. "We went to one party and shortly after there was another party," said Nicole. "There was no linking up or nothing, it was just hanging out.
"We just went to this party together. We weren’t together or anything. We were both leaning against the lockers and someone came up and congratulated us on getting engaged. We’re just like, ‘Thanks!’
"But we just looked at each other and said, ‘What was that about?’ Apparently we’re engaged. And then we both just looked at each other and he goes, ‘Well, why don’t we?’ And I was like, ‘OK.’"
And just like that, without even a kiss, they were engaged.
"Then the next day we went to The Fox and Hounds," she said, referring to a local pub in Kamloops. "That’s where we kissed before we got married. So it was checked out. And that weekend we went and got married," Nicole added with a laugh. "He was that good, he was that nice and I just saw that he was awesome. He had a huge heart. He was awesome."
After having rings tattooed on their fingers, the two were married in a brief ceremony at a commissionaire’s house before having to run off to a military exercise in Kelowna, where, as Nicole said, the government paid for a hotel room—their honeymoon.
"Maybe it was kind of weird, but it was pretty cool," she said of their brief engagement, smiling. "I just knew. It’s not something stupid, like no big production happens. It’s just something about a person: you know.
Doyle befriends a dog in Kandahar in 2008. [PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE]
Doyle befriends a dog in Kandahar in 2008.
PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE
"We’d worked together so we had conversations about stuff and we both matched on a lot—and what we differed on was good enough. You’re not supposed to be the same. You’re supposed to be your own individual. He was such a redneck guy, NASCAR kind of guy and he just killed me, he was pretty funny.
"He was such a boy-boy man and half the shit he did, I was just shaking my head laughing. I was like, ‘I can’t believe you thought you’d get away with that.’ And he’d just look at me and go, ‘Love me, I’m cute.’ I’d say, ‘No, you’re not.’
"That was his big thing, ‘Love me, I’m cute.’ No, but I think I’ll keep you anyway.
"No one we knew thought it would last, but we made it right until the day he died. Eleven years."
Perhaps not surprisingly, Erin’s sense of mischief spread into his sense of romance. Nicole remembers going on exercises only to come back to find that "he’d have gone into my tent space to gun tape a rose to my pillow or something. So every time I came back there was something like a teddy bear. And I’d get mad because it was dark and I’d say, ‘Who the hell threw their shit on my bed?’ And it wasn’t that, it was a present from him to me. I’m just like, ‘Oh, my, God,’ because I wasn’t really the girly kind of person."
Erin was 21 when they married and Nicole was 26. Her daughter Zarine was five.
Over the next few years Erin would become a fixture in Zarine’s life. Whether it was when Zarine accidentally lost one eyebrow to an unfortunate over-plucking incident and Erin did what had to be done, with his beard and all his tattoos, going out to shop for appropriate makeup, or later when Zarine would bring home boyfriends and Erin would be waiting in the garage to check them out.
"He was a great gift to me," said Nicole. "That’s for sure. I didn’t deserve him that much. He was really good. He was perfect. That’s it. He was."
She stopped talking. There was a pause.
"It’s OK. I just miss him a lot."
Nicole, in her preternatural calm, seems to see it all from some great height, from what is perhaps a distance necessary now, for her to get by. "I just need to get an everyday life going. It’s hard enough getting up to go to work and stuff and to not want to just sit at home. It takes quite a bit. But I’ve never been one to be like that, and a lot of people know me because of that. But it’s hard to keep that going when you’ve got people always standing in front of you kind of pitying you. Because, like Erin, I have no problem telling you: ‘OK, fuck off—enough already.’ That’s the way I am. But it’s hard to move on."
And as for the men who killed Doyle, Nicole is dealing with that, too.
"It’s just what happens in war. It’s not personal," she said, but added with a twinkle in her eye. "But there’s karma, I’m sure of it. And they’ll get theirs. They’ll get what’s coming to them."
Doyle’s friends, the soldiers, mostly agree, but with a small twist.
"It’s war. It’s not personal," said M.Cpl. Bruce Otto, who spent time with Doyle in Bosnia. "That said, if I ran into those three guys on the street," he continued, very quietly, as if he didn’t want anyone to hear, "I’d kill them all on sight."
Doyle test fires an AK-47 in Kabul in 2004. [PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE]
Doyle test fires an AK-47 in Kabul in 2004.
PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE
Too Far From Civility
Most of the time in the military a person’s rank means a lot, pretty much everything. The whole system is rigged so that a certain kind of soldier gets promoted, and it often works, but there’s a fine line between obedience and passiveness.
In some places, like out in the heavy clench of a tiny Canadian outpost in Panjwai, for example, it seems like a different kind of order takes over.
Out there in the mess, conducting what one officer called doctorate-level counter-insurgency operations in a place no longer ruled by the kind of civility senior officers were feeling back at Kandahar Airfield, guys like Doyle rose to a prominence all out of whack with their actual rank.
Captain Reg McMichael was Doyle’s platoon commander during the tour. McMichael is a full half-decade younger than Doyle (and many inches shorter) and he recalls that, "as a commander you want guys like Doyle because there are soldiers that you trust and there are soldiers that you lead. He was a soldier I trusted, so I often found myself not deferring, but I found myself seeking his guidance on things that a captain wouldn’t normally seek guidance from a master corporal on.
"I trusted his perspective on what was going on. I trusted that there would be no bullshit. I trusted that he wouldn’t lie. I trusted that he didn’t care what I thought of what he said—that he was just going to tell me the honest information. What he told you was exactly what he thought. You knew where you stood based solely on what he would say. There were no games."
Now, that’s not to say that McMichael and Doyle always got along perfectly. Doyle, being Doyle, loved to screw with those in authority until they managed to earn his respect.
McMichael remembers, quite clearly, the first time he met Doyle, when he took command of the platoon as a lieutenant.
As McMichael says, he’d already seen Doyle’s picture on the regiment website and knew he was a handful, but he wasn’t expecting the welcome he got. "I walked into the platoon office and he was sitting there. He looked up at me and said, ‘get the fuck out of here.’
"So I did."
McMichael then sought some advice from another officer, who told him to go back in and sort Doyle out.
"So I walked back into the office and Doyle said, ‘I told you to fuck off.’
"And I said, ‘go fuck yourself!’ And that’s how it started."
"He was a pretty big paradox," said McMichael. "You look at him and see the huge bushy beard, which definitely provoked people, and right on, you know, the big tattooed biker guy who doesn’t really fit into the norm of the clean-cropped, clean-shaven young soldier that we generally stamp up on posters, but nobody could really argue with how competent he was.
"It was weird because he would go from the rough, cursing, angry, Viking barbarian to the quiet, mannered, polite ambassador of Canadian foreign policy in a ravaged land. And I don’t know, it’s funny, but it’s that big dichotomy of soldiers that we want them to be capable of so much, yet crammed into the gentleman. Though with Doyle the gentleman was a bit harder to find sometimes, that’s the way he was.
Younger days spent with his train set. [PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE]
Younger days spent with his train set.
PHOTO: COURTESY NICOLE DOYLE
"He had this really like mischievous smirk on all the time, kind of like that knowing, ha, ha, ha sort of deal. Like he knew a joke you didn’t. And you wanted to know the joke. But he always would do that even when rounds were coming in—I remember distinctly him standing in these shitty shorts that he had on, up on the tower, shooting, and he’s looking back, and he’s like, ‘Hey, can you see over the wall, boss?’ while the rounds are hitting the other side of the wall. And I’m like, ‘You’re a dick,’ and he’s like, ‘I can get you a platform if you want.’ It was always that kind of stuff.
"And if I didn’t handle it well, he would say I was spinning. He always used to do that to me. ‘Hey, you look like you’re a little stressed right now. Are you allowed to get stressed?’ It was funny because it turned into this whole thing, like, ‘I have to look totally disassociated from what’s going on so that Erin doesn’t make fun of me.’ As if that was more upsetting than actually getting shot at, which is weird."
The Viking Goes Priority Echo
McMichael was in the operations room at Sperwan Ghar listening as Doyle’s section fought off a concerted insurgent attack out at substation Haji.
He listened as the section’s sergeant gave battle reports over the radio, as artillery was called in, as bombers were called in, and then he listened in horror as another call came in. Men had been hit. There was someone wounded. A nine-liner medevac was called in priority Alpha, which meant it was urgent. Then another was called in priority Echo, which meant, well, dead.
They don’t use names on the radio, so they had to wait for the identifying Zap numbers to follow. Everybody in the room gasped as they heard, "R69194106" crackle through the speaker.
It was Doyle, and McMichael simply couldn’t believe it.
A few hours later, and a full world away, Nicole was waiting for Erin to get on the Internet for her goodnight chat session. He didn’t show up on time. "It was weird because the time wasn’t right—midnight had passed and normally that’s when he has time to talk to me," Nicole remembered.
"I’m used to him not meeting the timings, it doesn’t always match up, but this one felt weird. And then the phone rang at 1:30 in the morning. I was just like, ‘That’s not right.’
"I answered the phone and it was the (battalion) commanding officer and he said, ‘Is this Nicole Doyle, Mrs. Nicole Doyle?’ I said, ‘Yes.’
"He says, ‘We need to come to your house.’
"I said, ‘What happened?’
"I said, ‘Is he alive or is he dead?’
"And he said, ‘We need to come to your house, we can’t tell you over the phone.’"
Nicole asked them where they were and they told her they were five minutes down the road. She went out the front door and looked down the road and they were parked alongside a block away. Then their headlights came on and they drove up to her house.
"And I went in the house and they came in. I just looked at the CO and I said, ‘Is he alive or dead?’ And he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
"And I said, ‘Was it quick? What happened?’"
He told her it was quick.
"Everything just goes through your head. Just insane. It was just like it was so complete. I don’t know how to explain it. It was unbelievable for a bit, and then it was like, knowing the life, I just thought, ‘Well, it has to be true. They wouldn’t be standing here.’"
Then Nicole started making phone calls.
Stories From The Field
There are many reasons to become a soldier. Some probably do it for the adventure, some maybe for the money, and some because they don’t have anything better to do.
But for some guys, it seems like they have no choice, or rather that they had no choice. Whether they fit in there or not, whether they do it right or not, they are soldiers because somewhere a long time ago they decided that’s who they were. They are committed to the idea, you could say. Doyle seems to have decided to become a soldier sometime around the time he was born. Or at least that’s the conclusion you could come to if you saw his childhood collection of playing cards which, aside from a few topless girls, were primarily the rare, but quite cool, Desert Storm cards commemorating the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
While Doyle may have questioned anything, or everything, he also knew where the questions had to stop and action had to start.
Early on in the tour, he came upon a scene just near the Zangabad base where his friend M.Cpl. Kevin Nanson had been badly injured in an IED strike and was currently laying still inside the damaged Nyala patrol vehicle.
Doyle waited as long as he could, but things were happening too slowly. He sprung into action, taking control of the scene, getting Nanson help and calling in a medevac.
For his part, Nanson remembers lying on the ground, looking up at Doyle, who’d been called over to calm the wounded man by one of the medics.
Nanson remembers seeing the sun come through Doyle’s beard. Nanson tried to speak to his friend, but his teeth were blown out and his lungs were filling with blood.
Doyle wanted to reassure his buddy, so he punched him in the chest and told him he’d be all right.
"Normally I wouldn’t have minded," said Nanson, smiling. "But my back was broken at the time, so…"
Despite the extra pain, Nanson has nothing but unending admiration for his friend and is now trying to start a Christmas charity in his name in order to, as he says, somehow thank him for saving his life.
Doyle lived for his guys. That is what everyone said about him. He would have done anything for friends like Nanson, Yaschuk or Fraser, but, equally, he would have done anything for the young privates and corporals under his command.
When Doyle came home on leave in June he was in bad shape. Nicole had never seen him like this. "He was tired. He told me he had been diagnosed with typhoid. I guess he was misdiagnosed at first and jacked up for being dehydrated and then a few days later he got told something else," said Nicole.
"He said he was extremely tired. He’s like, ‘I just want to come home. I’m done.’ When he was on leave I surprised him with a hot tub because I knew he was tired, I knew he needed to be spoiled. That’s when he went and said, ‘I don’t want to go back, but I have to. I’m not happy.’ That’s when I asked him if he wanted me to go to the padre, to step in for him. He said, ‘No.’ I was like, ‘OK.’"
The End
Back in Afghanistan and back out at Haji, things had not gotten any easier for McMichael, Doyle, and all the men.
Through July and into August they were in contact almost every day. When I was at Haji in April, it was held by about 25 Canadians and a whole bunch of Afghan National Police. Now it was being held by about 10 guys total.
Unable to mount effective clearance patrols to keep the enemy back, they knew it was only a matter of time until the enemy came for them. And come they did. The first rounds hit the sandbagged walls of the base in the very early hours of the morning. Doyle led the charge to man the heavy C6 machine-gun in the southernmost guard tower.
Doyle—who had the rarest talent of always appearing to have a good time, who seemingly had the idea that life is some kind of fierce party—stuck with his guns until the end.
But it was almost like the enemy knew exactly where he would be. Three rockets fired from point-blank range slammed into the tower and Doyle died that day. "When he got killed we all said ‘Well, if he had to die, that’s the way he wanted to die,’" said McMichael, choking back tears. "He died pulling the trigger. He died screaming into the face of the enemy. He died doing what every soldier wants to do. If he had to go, that’s how he’d want to go, defying the enemy to the last.
"He stood against it though, you know what I mean? How many guys do you know have actually stood against evil people?" asked McMichael, gently. "He paid the ultimate sacrifice for it, but didn’t he give the rest of us hope in doing that?"
It was Aug. 11, 2008. Doyle was 32.
EPILOGUE: The Cost
Many of Doyle’s friends had themselves tattooed in memoriam, but they didn’t want to tell me about the tattoos. And they didn’t, in fact. I only learned about it later.
Beyond that, as McMichael said, the loss is really "not quantifiable."
"We were stunned. I think a lot of us are still stunned. As for me, I literally can’t picture the fact that he’s not somewhere. You just expect to see him."
For Nicole, well, as her friends say, she’s tough. But it’s no easy road.
"Erin even told me, ‘Just get it done and move on. Don’t sit and dwell on it,’" said Nicole, recalling a conversation she had about the possibility of his death. "I just told him, ‘You have no idea how hard it would be if I had to deal with this. None.’
"And I did really have a hard time and I still have my bad days but I never have been one to lie down and be kicked around. This is very hard for me because he’s my best friend but I’m not one to stop living because of it.
"I have him down the road anytime I need to go see him. I know he didn’t want me to dwell on it. It’s just going to take time to get past all that. I’ve always got him around. I know he’s always there.
"But the most insane thing that bothers me is having him referred to as a number. Cities of men were lost in the previous wars and they’re still trying to figure out…who certain guys were and until someone can list off the thousands of guys that died in the last two World Wars, they have no right to keep saying that.
"I hate that with all my heart. He wasn’t the 90th. He was Master Corporal Erin Melvin Doyle. He was a very good man and that’s the way I want him remembered. Not as a number."
Erin Melvin Doyle
Born: March 20, 1976, in Maple Ridge, B.C. Grew up in Kamloops.
Enlisted: May 21, 1998.
Favourite activities: restoring old trucks and cars, shovelling neighbour’s sidewalks, playing pranks on friends and others.
Probable reason he was able to grow his beard so long: Doyle played Santa every year at the PPCLI Christmas party.
Gyms now named after him: two, one at 3 Battalion, PPCLI and another at 1 Bn., PPCLI. There was a third in Zangabad, but that base has been torn down.
He was scared of: heights, bees (he was allergic) and pretty much nothing else.
Surviving Family: Kathleen (mother), Melvin (father), Sean (brother), Barb Loucks (step-mother), Bob Mitchell
(step-father) and Keari (half-sister).
His dreams for the future included: becoming a Search and Rescue technician, before retiring with Nicole to Valemount, B.C., where he wanted to pump gas.
Buried: St. Emile Cemetery, Legal, Alta., Aug. 21, 2008.
Email the writer at: aday@legion.ca
Email a letter to the editor at: letters@legionmagazine.com
http://legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/2009/03/the-life-and-death-of-erin-doyle/
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Hero Prince Harry joins Army’s elite
PRINCE HARRY is to join the Army’s most elite Apache helicopter unit and could soon be flying from an aircraft carrier taking part in some of the most challenging missions faced by pilots.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/421154/Hero-Prince-Harry-joins-Army-s-elite
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Gay Russians seeking refuge in Canada to escape homophobic new laws
By Tobi Cohen, Postmedia News
"It’s a danger in Russia to tell anyone you’re gay," he said. "I can still hardly believe how openly homosexual I can be in Canada. Without any negative consequences for this . . . I can be myself."
http://www.canada.com/life/Russians+seeking+refuge+Canada+escape+homophobic+laws/8770886/story.html
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SAYS IT ALL DOESN'T IT... NDP NOVA SCOTIA NEEDS 2 STEP UP ON FISH FARMS- SEA LICE AND DISESE.... it's time... pls.
Fish farms: Dexter government pays big bucks to rag the puck
August 9, 2013 - 4:50pm By FRED GIFFIN
The recent announcement and commencement of a long and drawn-out process entitled "Independent Aquaculture Regulatory Review" is an almost perfect example of political diversion, delay and deceit.
Diversion: The constant harassment of the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture by angry residents of coastal communities, lobster fishermen, angling associations, and citizens concerned about the environmental crisis caused by ocean-based fin-fish farms has been deliberately diverted to a panel of two Dalhousie law professors and a government-appointed board, all being paid from tax dollars to take the heat off minister Sterling Belliveau and the government.
If the government doesn’t already know what this panel has been given the mandate to find out, then this just confirms the closed minds, blind eyes and deaf ears of the department that thousand of Nova Scotians have experienced over the past several years.
Delay: The review process and "regulatory framework" have been designed to take 18 months. How convenient that this will take us past the next election.
I suppose it may take that long for two law professors to catch up with what thousands of Nova Scotians already know, and they are being paid handsomely to learn the obvious. The diversion tactic can be used throughout the extended time frame. The department simply has to proclaim the positive steps that are being taken to put together this "regulatory framework."
Deceit: Anyone who thinks that the priority of this government and the "regulatory framework" is for the good of the people and the environment, and to the detriment of the ocean-based fish-farming industry and the preconceived agenda of the government, would have to be terribly naïve. This issue, now a crisis, has been fraught with deceit, right from the highly touted strategy to expand the industry and the highly publicized $25 million grant/loan combo for Cooke Aquaculture.
The strict regulations that are required for this industry can be straightforward, brief and to the point and can be stated right now rather than in 18 months, and at no cost.
These regulations would benefit the environment, the people, other commercial fisheries, residents, taxpayers and tourism. Regulations that will cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and take 18 months will likely satisfy the predetermined agenda of the government and the industry first — the environment and the wishes of the people receiving a much lower priority.
Here are my proposed regulations for ocean-based pen fin-fish farms.
1. Any and all applications are to be rejected effective immediately.
2. Any operators convicted of using illegal pesticides are to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
3. All use of antibiotics to counteract infectious salmon anemia (ISA) and other viral infections is to be discontinued.
4. Any operator of a farm where ISA has been confirmed would be required to destroy the entire population without monetary compensation.
5. No ISA-infected fish will be processed for market.
6. When any tests for sulphide and/or copper exceed existing regulations, the operator will be required to fallow the farm after harvest until tests are below regulated maximum levels.
7. All existing ocean-based pen fish-farm operators will be required to research, develop and install means of waste reclamation within a specified time period or cease operations.
8. Any and all funding for fin-fish farms are to be directed to research for land-based operations or for research, development and installation of waste reclamation for ocean-based farms.
It can be readily seen that in order for ocean-based fin-fish farms to be environmentally sustainable, the required action would likely be prohibitive, which only goes to prove this industry, as it exists now, is poisonous and destructive. If enforcing such strict regulations cannot be achieved economically, it proves that there is no right way to do the wrong thing.
At the time Cooke Aquaculture received the grant/loan combo from the government, it stated that the industry needed to be "economically, environmentally and socially sustainable." Note the priorities. Economically sustainable is the only criterion that has been satisfied; the ocean-based fin-fish farming industry has otherwise been an environmental and social disaster.
Fred Giffin lives in Liverpool.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1146848-fish-farms-dexter-government-pays-big-bucks-to-rag-the-puck
AND HERE'S THE VOTE- IF NDP WANTS 2ND TERM... pls
comment:
I agree with this analysis. I support this plan and any political party that will adopt it as policy.
comment:
I suggest you take a drive along the eastern shore and look at the amount of signs against fish farming if you want a view of the number of people who share his view. Strangely up until a few years ago Dexter shared that view. Now, alas, he has seen the light..and the money.
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CANADA AND NATO TROOPS MATTER/Warrior Dogs/Get Up Weary Soldier-videos/ Why we're there- Through the eyes of Nedas (2009) and her brothers- Arab Nations must keep up with the world in 2013- our planet needs u
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/08/canada-and-nato-troops-matterwarrior.html
bullying kills- bullycide haunts the world- One Billion Rising- breaking the chains of abuse
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=651383811546311&set=a.153203521364345.32932.100000240949070&type=1&theater
CHILD ABUSE- mind rape, physical torture, sexual assault - TROOPS, BIKERS, FACEBOOK, EVERYDAY FOLKS- saying the same thing.... it must stop- step up Canada- step up world- One Billion Rising- breaking the chains- of abuse -thx David Beckham 4 stepping up with UNICEF- r kids matter
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=651390708212288&set=a.153203521364345.32932.100000240949070&type=1&theater
A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2013/08/a-man-who-is-good-enough-to-shed-his.html
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The Trews - Highway of Heroes
"Highway of Heroes", was co-written and co-produced by The Trews and Gordie Johnson (Big Sugar) and was inspired by the 2006 death of Captain Nichola Goddard from The Trews' hometown of Antigonish, NS. Canada's Highway of Heroes, is the section of the MacDonald-Cartier freeway named to honour those who have sacrificed all in service of country.
You can purchase "Highway of Heroes" world-wide exclusively via iTunes. http://bit.ly/dbVi6d
ALSO
Remembering Canada's son's and daughters.... and all those beautiful Canadian children we have lost..... and to our 6,000 wounded.... we got your backs.... of that you can be sure.... no political games on this one... we will ensure it gets fixed... and fast..... God bles you all.- and all our Nato Coalition Sons and Daughters from 47 countries.... we are still here.... each and every day..
158 Canadian soldiers, two aid workers, one journalist and one diplomat have been killed since the Canadian military deployed to Afghanistan in early 2002.
CANADA: Timeline: Death toll in Afghanistan 2013
Master Corporal Byron Garth Greff Age: 28
Deceased: October 29, 2011
Unit: 3rd Battalion Princess Patricias's Canadian Light Infantry
Hometown: Swift Current, Saskatchewan
Incident: Improvised explosive device, Kabul, Afghanistan
Deceased: June Francis Roy
Deceased: May 27, 2011: Bombardier Karl Manning; Hometown: 5th Régiment d'artillerie légère du Canada of the 1er Royal 22e Régiment Battle GroupIncident: Non combat related
Deceased: March 28, 2011: Corporal Yannick Scherrer : 24 of Montreal, Quebec: 1st Battalion, Royal 22nd Regiment, based in CFB Valcartier in Quebec: Yannick's First tour,Nakhonay, southwest of Kandahar City
Deceased: December 18, 2010: Corporal Steve Martin -Age: 24-Hometown: St-Cyrille-de-Wendover (Québec)-Unit: 3e Bataillon, Royal 22e Régiment-Incident: Improvised explosive device, Panjwa'i District, Afghanistan.
Deceased February 10, 2010- at home but still on active duty to Afghanistan- Captain Francis (Frank) Cecil Paul to the official list of Canadian Forces (CF) casualties sustained in support of the mission in Afghanistan. Capt Paul died in Canada last February while on leave from Kandahar.
Deceased: August 30, 2010 Corporal Brian Pinksen, Age: 21, Hometown: Corner Brook , Newfoundland and Labrador ,Unit: 2nd Battalion , Royal Newfoundland Regiment, Incident: Improvised explosive device, Panjwa'i District, Afghanistan.
Deceased: July 20, 2010 Sapper Brian Collier Age: 24 Hometown: Bradford, Ontariom Unit: 1 Combat Engineer Regiment Incident: Improvised explosive device, Panjwa'i District, Afghanistan
Deceased: June 26, 2010 Master Corporal Kristal Giesebrecht Age: 34 Hometown:Wallaceburg, Ontario.Unit: 1 Canadian Field Hospital Incident: Improvised explosive device, Panjwa'i District, Afghanistan
Deceased: June 26, 2010 Private Andrew Miller Age: 21 Hometown: Sudbury, Ontario Unit: 2 Field Ambulance Incident: Improvised explosive device, Panjwa'i District, Afghanistan.
Deceased: June 21, 2010 Sergeant James Patrick MacNeil Age: 29 Hometown: Glace Bay, Nova Scotia Unit: 2 Combat Engineer Regiment Incident: Improvised explosive device, Panjwa'i District, Afghanistan.
Deceased: June 6, 2010 Sergeant Martin Goudreault Age: 35 Hometown: Sudbury, Ontario Unit: 1 Combat Engineer Regiment Incident: Improvised explosive device, Panjwa'i District, Afghanistan.
Deceased: May 24, 2010Trooper Larry Rudd Age: 26 Hometown: Brantford, Ontario Unit: Royal Canadian Dragoons Incident: Improvised explosive device, southwest of Kandahar City, Afghanistan.
Deceased: May 18, 2010Colonel Geoff Parker Age: 42 Hometown: Oakville, Ont.Unit: Land Forces Central Area Headquarters Incident: Suicide bomber, Kabul, Afghanistan
May 13 Pte. Kevin Thomas McKay, 24, was killed by a homemade landmine while on a night patrol near the village of Nakhoney, 15 southwest of Kandahar City.
May 3 Petty Officer Second Class Douglas Craig Blake, 37, was on foot with other soldiers around 4:30 p.m. Monday near the Sperwan Ghar base in Panjwaii district when an improvised explosive device detonated.
Apr 11 Private Tyler William Todd, 26, originally from Kitchener, Ont., was killed when he stepped on an improvised explosive device while taking part in a foot patrol in the district of Dand, about eight kilometres southwest of Kandahar City.
Mar 20 Corporal Darren James Fitzpatrick, a 21-year-old infantryman from Prince George, B.C., succumbed to wounds received from a roadside bomb that detonated during a joint Canadian-Afghan mission 25 kilometres west of Kandahar City.
Feb. 12 Corporal Joshua Caleb Baker, a 24-year-old Edmonton-based soldier died in an explosion during a "routine" training exercise at a range four kilometres north of Kandahar City.
Jan. 16 Sergeant John Wayne Faught, a 44-year-old section commander from Delta Company, 1 Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry of Edmonton. Faught was killed when a land mine exploded underneath him while he led a foot patrol near the village of Nakhoney, about 15 kilometres southwest of Kandahar City.
2009
Dec. 30 Private Garrett William Chidley, 21, of Cambridge, Ont.; Corporal Zachery McCormack, 21, of Edmonton; Sergeant George Miok, 28, of Edmonton; Sergeant Kirk Taylor, 28, of Yarmouth, N.S.; and Canwest journalist Michelle Lang of Calgary. All were killed when a massive homemade land mine blew up under the light-armoured vehicle that was carrying them on a muddy dirt road on Kandahar City's southern outskirts.
Dec. 23 Lieut. Andrew Richard Nuttall, 30, originally from Prince Rupert, B.C., was serving with the Edmonton-based 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. died when a homemade bomb detonated as he led a foot patrol in the dangerous Panjwaii district southwest of Kandahar City.
Oct. 30 Sapper Steven Marshall, 24, a combat engineer with the 11th Field Squadron, 1st Combat Engineer Regiment had been in Afghanistan less than one week when he stepped on a homemade landmine while on patrol in Panjwaii District about 10 kilometres southwest of Kandahar City.
Oct. 28 Lt. Justin Garrett Boyes, 26, from the Edmonton-based, 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry was killed by a homemade bomb planted while on patrol with Afghan National Police near Kandahar City.
Sep. 17 Private Jonathan Couturier, 23, of Loretteville, Que., with the 2nd Battalion, Royal 22nd Regiment, died when an armoured vehicle struck an improvised explosive device about 25 kilometres southwest of Kandahar City in Panjwaii district. Eleven other soldiers suffered slight injuries.
Sep. 13 An armoured vehicle struck an improvised explosive device near Kandahar City, killing Pte. Patrick Lormand, 21. Four other soldiers from 2nd Battalion, Royal 22nd Regiment received minor injuries in the blast.
Sep. 6: Major Yannick Pepin, 36, of Victoriaville, Que., commander of the 51st Field Engineers Squadron of the 5th Combat Engineers, and Cpl. Jean-Francois Drouin, 31, of Quebec City, who served with the same unit, were killed and five other Canadians were injured when their armoured vehicle struck an improvised explosive device in Dand District, southwest of Kandahar City.
Aug 1: Sapper Matthieu Allard, 21, and his close friend, Cpl. Christian Bobbitt, 23, were killed near Kandahar City by an improvised explosive device when they got off their armoured vehicle to examine damage to another vehicle in their resupply convoy that had been hit by another IED. Both men served with the 5th Combat Engineers Regiment from Valcartier, Que.
Jul 16: Private Sebastien Courcy, 26, of St. Hyacinthe, Que., with the Quebec-based Royal 22nd Regiment was killed when he fell from "a piece of high ground" during a combat operation in the Panjwaii District.
Jul. 6: Two Canadian soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan when the Griffon helicopter they were aboard crashed during a mission. Master Cpl. Pat Audet, 38, from the 430 tactical helicopter squadron; and Cpl. Martin Joannette, 25, from the third battalion of the Royal 22nd Regiment, both based in Valcartier, Que.
Jul. 4: Master Cpl. Charles-Philippe Michaud, 28, died in a Quebec City hospital from injuries he sustained after stepping on a landmine while on foot patrol June 23.
Jul. 3: Corporal Nicholas Bulger, 30, hailed from Peterborough, Ont., and was with the Edmonton-based 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. The convoy which transports Canada's top soldier in Afghanistan hit a roadside bomb, killing Bulger who was a member of the general's tactical team and injuring five others.
Jun. 14: Corporal Martin Dubé, 35, from Quebec City, Quebec with the 5 Combat Engineer Regiment killed by an improvised explosive device, in the Panjwayi District of Afghanistan.
Jun. 8: Private Alexandre Péloquin, 20, of Brownsburg-Chatham, Quebec with 3rd Battalion, Royal 22nd Regiment. Was killed by an improvised explosive device, Panjwayi District, Afghanistan.
Apr. 23: Major Michelle Mendes, based in Ottawa, Ont. was found dead in her room at the Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan.
Apr. 13: Trooper Karine Blais, 21, with the 12th Armoured Regiment based in Val Cartier, Que., was killed in action when her vehicle was hit by a homemade bomb.
Mar. 20: Master Cpl. Scott Vernelli of the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, and Pte. Tyler Crooks of 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, died when they were hit by an IED while on a foot patrol in western Zahri District as part of Operation Jaley. An Afghan interpreter was also killed. Five other soldiers from November Company were wounded as was another Afghan interpreter. About two hours later, Trooper Jack Bouthillier and Trooper Corey Hayes from a reconnaissance squadron of the Petawawa-based Royal Canadian Dragoons died when their armoured vehicle struck an IED in Shah Wali Khot District about 20 kilometres northeast of Kandahar. Three other Dragoons were wounded in the same blast.
Mar. 8: Trooper Marc Diab, 22, with the Royal Canadian Dragoons based in Petawawa was killed by a roadside bomb north of Kandahar City.
Mar. 3: Warrant Officer Dennis Raymond Brown, a reservist from The Lincoln and Welland Regiment, based in St. Catharines, Ont., Cpl. Dany Olivier Fortin from the 425 Tactical Fighter Squadron at 3 Wing, based in Bagotville, Que., and Cpl. Kenneth Chad O'Quinn, from 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group Headquarters and Signals Squadron, in Petawawa, Ont., were killed when an IED detonated near their armoured vehicle northwest of Kandahar.
Jan. 31: Sapper Sean Greenfield, 25, was killed when and IED hit his armoured vehicle while driving in the Zhari district, west of Kandahar. He was with the 2 Combat Engineer Regiment based in Petawawa.
Jan. 7: Trooper Brian Richard Good, 42, died when the armoured vehicle he was traveling in was struck by an improvised explosive devise, or IED. Three other soldiers were injured in the blast, which occurred around 8 a.m. in the Shahwali Kot district, about 35 kilometres north of Kandahar City.
2008
Dec. 27: Warrant Officer Gaetan Joseph Maxime Roberge and Sgt. Gregory John Kruse died in a bomb blast while they were conducting a security patrol in the Panjwaii district, west of Kandahar City. Their Afghan interpreter and a member of the Afghan National Army were also killed. Three other Canadian soldiers were injured in the blast.
Dec. 26: Private Michael Bruce Freeman, 28, was killed after his armoured vehicle was struck by an explosive device in the Zhari dessert, west of Kandahar City. Three other soldiers were injured in the blast.
Dec. 13: Three soldiers were killed by an IED west of Kandahar City after responding to reports of people planting a suspicious object. Cpl. Thomas James Hamilton, 26, Pte. John Michael Roy Curwin, 26, and Pte. Justin Peter Jones, 21, members of 2nd Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment from CFB Gagetown, N.B., died.
Dec. 5: An IED kills W.O. Robert Wilson, 38, Cpl. Mark McLaren, 23, and Pte. Demetrios Diplaros, 25, all members of the 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment based in Petawawa, Ont. All three are from Ontario - Keswick, Peterborough and Scarborough respectively.
Sep. 7: Sergeant Prescott (Scott) Shipway, 36, was killed by an IED just days away from completing his second tour of Afghanistan and on the same day the federal election is called. Shipway, a section commander with 2nd battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based out of Winnipeg, was killed in the Panjwaii district. He is from Saskatchewan.
Sep. 3: Corporals Andrew (Drew) Grenon, 23, of Windsor, Ont., and Mike Seggie, 21, of Winnipeg and Pte. Chad Horn, 21, of Calgary, infantrymen with the 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry from CFB Shilo, where killed in a Taliban ambush. Five other soldiers were injured in the attack.
Aug. 20: Three combat engineers attached to 2nd Battalion Batallion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Edmonton are killed by an IED in Zhari district. Sgt. Shawn Eades, 34, of Hamilton, Ont., Cpl. Dustin Roy Robert Joseph Wasden,25, of the Spiritwood, Sask., area, and Sapper Stephan John Stock, 25, of Campbell River, B.C. A fourth soldier was seriously injured.
Aug. 13: Jacqueline Kirk and Shirley Case, who were in Afghanistan with the International Rescue Committee, died in Afghanistan's Logar province after the car they were riding in was ambushed. Kirk, 40, was a dual British-Canadian citizen from Outremont, Que. Case, 30, was from Williams Lake, B.C.
Aug. 11: Master Cpl. Erin Doyle, 32, of Kamloops, B.C., an Edmonton-based soldier of 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was killed in a firefight in Panjwaii district.
Aug. 9: Master Cpl. Josh Roberts, 29, a native of Saskatchewan and a member of 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Shilo, Man., died during a firefight involving a private security company in the Zhari district, west of Kandahar City. The death is under investigation.
Jul. 18: Corporal James Hayward Arnal of Winnipeg, an infantryman with 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was rushed from the patrol in the volatile Panjwaii district to Kandahar Airfield, where he died from his injuries sustained from an IED.
Jul. 5: Private Colin William Wilmot, a medic with 1 Field Ambulance and attached to 2nd Battalion Batallion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry from Edmonton, stepped on an IED while on foot patrol in the Panjwaii district.
Jul. 4: Corporal Brendan Anthony Downey died at Camp Mirage in an undisclosed country in the Arabian Peninsula of non-combat injuries. He was in his quarters at the time. Downey, 36, was a military police officer with 17 Wing Detachment, Dundurn, Sask.
Jun. 7: Captain Jonathan Sutherland Snyder, a member of 1 Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Edmonton, died after falling into a well while on a security patrol in the Zhari district.
Jun. 3: Captain Richard Leary, 32, was killed when his patrol came under small arms fire while on foot patrol west of Kandahar City. Leary, "Stevo" to his friends, and a member of 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was based at CFB Shilo, Man.
May 6: Corporal Michael Starker of the 15 Field Ambulance was fatally wounded during a foot patrol in the Pashmul region of the Afghanistan's Zhari district. Starker, 36, was a Calgary paramedic on his second tour in Afghanistan. He was part of a civil-military co-operation unit that did outreach in local villages. Another soldier, who was not identified, was wounded in the incident.
Apr. 4: Private Terry John Street, of Surrey, B.C., and based with 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Shilo, Man., was killed when his armoured vehicle hit an improvised explosive device to the southwest of Kandahar City.
Mar. 16: Sergeant Jason Boyes of Napanee, Ont., based with 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Shilo, Man., was killed when he steps on a buried explosive device while on foot patrol in the Zangabad region in Panjwaii District.
Mar. 11: Bombardier Jeremie Ouellet, 22, of Matane, Que., died in his quarters at Kandahar Airfield. He was with the 1st Regiment, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery. His death is under investigation by the National Investigative Service.
Mar. 2: Trooper Michael Yuki Hayakaze, 25, of Edmonton was killed by an IED just days before his tour was scheduled to end. He was in a vehicle about 45 kilometres west of the Kandahar base. He was a member of the Lord Strathcona's Horse (Royal Canadians).
Jan. 23: Sapper Etienne Gonthier, 21, of St-George-de-Beauce, Que., and based with 5e Regiment du genie de combat in Val Cartier, Que. was killed and two others wounded in an incident involving a roadside bomb.
Jan. 15: Trooper Richard Renaud from Alma, Que., was killed and a second Canadian soldier was injured when their armoured vehicle hit a roadside bomb Tuesday in Kandahar's Zhari district. Renaud, 26, of the 12eme Regiment blinde du Canada in Valcartier, Que., and three other soldiers were on a routine patrol in the Arghandab region, about 10 Kilometres north of Kandahar City, when their Coyote reconnaissance vehicle struck the improvised explosive device.
Jan. 6: Corporal Eric Labbe, 31, of Rimouski, Que., and W.O. Hani Massouh died when their light armoured vehicle rolled over in Zhari district.
2007
Dec. 30: Gunner Jonathan Dion, 27, a gunner from Val d'Or, Que., died and four others were injured after their armoured vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Zhari district.
Nov. 17: Corporal Nicholas Raymond Beauchamp, of the 5th Field Ambulance, and Pte. Michel Levesque, of the Royal 22nd Regiment, both based in Valcartier, Que., were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near their LAV-III armoured vehicle in Zhari district.
Sep. 25: Corporal Nathan Hornburg, 24, of the Kings Own Calgary Regiment, was killed by mortar fire while trying to repair the track of a Leopard tank during an operation in the Panjwaii district.
Aug. 29: Major Raymond Ruckpaul, serving at the NATO coalition headquarters in Kabul, died after being found shot in his room. ISAF and Canadian officials have said they had not ruled out suicide, homicide or accident as the cause of death. Ruckpaul was an armoured officer based at the NATO Allied Land Component Command Headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany. His hometown and other details have not been released.
Aug. 22: Two Canadian soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb. M.W.O. Mario Mercier of 2nd Battalion Batallion, Royal 22nd Regiment, based in Valcartier, Que., and Master Cpl. Christian Duchesne, a member of Fifth Ambulance de campagne, also based in Valcartier, died when the vehicle they were in struck a suspected mine, approximately 50 kilometres west of Kandahar City during Operation EAGLE EYE. An Afghan interpreter was also killed and a third soldier and two Radio Canada journalists were injured.
Aug. 19: Private Simon Longtin, 23, died when the LAV-III armoured vehicle he was travelling in struck an improvised explosive device.
Jul. 4: Six Canadian soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle. The dead are Capt. Matthew Johnathan Dawe, Cpl. Cole Bartsch, Cpl. Jordan Anderson and Pte. Lane Watkins, all of 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, based in Edmonton, and Master Cpl. Colin Bason, a reservist from The Royal Westminster Regiment and Capt. Jefferson Clifford Francis of 1 Royal Canadian Horse Artillery based in Shilo Man.
Jun. 20: Three soldiers from 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, died when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device. Sgt. Christos Karigiannis, Cpl. Stephen Bouzane, 26, and Pte. Joel Wiebe, 22 were on a re-supply mission, travelling between two checkpoints in an open, all-terrain vehicle, not an armoured vehicle.
Jun. 11: Trooper Darryl Caswell, 2nd Battalion Royal Canadian Dragoons, was killed by a roadside bomb that blew up near the vehicle hewas travelling in, while on patrol about 40 minutes north of Kandahar city. He was part of a resupply mission.
May 30: Master Cpl. Darrell Jason Priede, a combat cameraman, died when an American helicopter he was aboard crashed in Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province, reportedly after being shot at by Taliban fighters. Priede was from CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.
May 25: Corporal Matthew McCully, a signals operator from 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group Headquarters and Signals Squadron, based at Petawawa, Ont., was killed while on foot patrol and another soldier was injured when a roadside bomb exploded near them during a major operation to clear out Taliban. The soldier, a member of the mentorship and liaison team, is believed to have stepped on an improvised explosive device.
Apr. 18: Master Cpl. Anthony Klumpenhouwer, 25, a special forces member, died from injuries sustained in an accidental fall from a communications tower in Kandahar, Afghanistan. It is the first death of a special forces member while on duty in Afghanistan.
Apr. 11: Master Cpl. Allan Stewart, 30, and Trooper Patrick Pentland, 23, were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan. Both men were members of the Royal Canadian Dragoons based at CFB Petawawa, Ont.
Apr. 8: Six Canadian soldiers died in southern Afghanistan as a result of injuries sustained when the vehicle they were travelling in hit an explosive device. Sgt. Donald Lucas, Cpl. Aaron E. Williams, Cpl. Brent Poland, Pte. Kevin Vincent Kennedy, Pte. David Robert Greenslade, 2nd Battalion The Royal Canadian Regiment, based in Gagetown, N.B. were killed in the blast. Cpl. Christopher Paul Stannix, a reservist from the Princess Louise Fusiliers, based in Halifax, also died. One other soldier was seriously injured.
Mar. 6: Corporal Kevin Megeney, 25, a reservist from Stellarton, N.S., died in an accidental shooting. He was shot through the chest and left lung. Megeney went to Afghanistan in the fall as a volunteer with 1st Batallion, Nova Scotia Highlanders Militia.
2006
Nov. 27: Two Canadian soldiers were killed on the outskirts of Kandahar when a suicide car bomber attacked a convoy of military vehicles. Cpl. Albert Storm, 36, of Niagara Falls, Ont., and Chief Warrant Officer Robert Girouard, 46, from Bouctouche, N.B., were members of the Royal Canadian Regiment based in Petawawa, Ont. They were in an armoured personnel carrier that had just left the Kandahar Airfield base when a vehicle approached and detonated explosives.
Oct. 14: Sergeant Darcy Tedford and Pte. Blake Williamson from 1st Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment in Petawawa, Ont., were killed and three others wounded after troops in Kandahar province came under attack by Taliban insurgents wielding rocket propelled grenades and mortars, according to media reports. The troops were trying to build a road in the region when the ambush attack occurred.
Oct. 7: Trooper Mark Andrew Wilson, a member of the Royal Canadian Dragoons of Petawawa, Ont., died after a roadside bomb or IED exploded under a Nyala armoured vehicle. Wilson was a gunner in the Nyala vehicle. The blast occurred in the Pashmul region of Afghanistan.
Oct. 3: Corporal Robert Thomas James Mitchell and Sgt. Craig Paul Gillam were killed in an attack in southern Afghanistan as they worked to clear a route for a future road construction project. Both were members of the Petawawa, Ont.-based Royal Canadian Dragoons.
Sep. 29: Private Josh Klukie was killed by an improvised explosive device while he was conducting a foot patrol in a farm field in the Panjwaii district. Klukie, of Thunder Bay, Ont., was serving in the First Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment.
Sep. 18: Four soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber riding a bicycle detonated explosives in the Panjwaii area. Cpl. Shane Keating, Cpl. Keith Morley and Pte. David Byers, 22, all members of 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry from Shilo, Man., and Cpl. Glen Arnold, a member of 2 Field Ambulance, from Petawawa, Ont., were killed in the attack that wounded several others.
Sep. 4: Private Mark Anthony Graham, a member of 1st Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment, based at CFB Petawawa, Ont., killed and dozens of others wounded in a friendly fire incident involving an American A-10 Warthog aircraft. Graham was a Canadian Olympic team member in 1992, when he raced as a member of the 4 x 400 metre relay team.
Sep. 3: Four Canadian soldiers - W.O. Richard Francis Nolan, W.O. Frank Robert Mellish, Sgt. Shane Stachnik and Pte. William Jonathan James Cushley, all based at CFB Petawawa, west of Ottawa, were killed as insurgents disabled multiple Canadian vehicles with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Nine other Canadians were wounded in the fighting that killed an estimated 200 Taliban members.
Aug. 22: Corporal David Braun, a recently arrived soldier with 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was killed by a suicide bomber outside the gates of Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar City. The soldier, in his 20s, was a native of Raymore, Sask. Three other Canadian soldiers were injured in the afternoon attack.
Aug. 11: Corporal Andrew James Eykelenboom died during an attack by a suicide bomber on a Canadian convoy that was resupplying a forward fire base south of Kandahar near the border with Pakistan. A medic with the 1st Field Ambulance based in Edmonton, he was in his mid-20s and had been in the Canadian Forces for four years.
Aug. 9: Master Cpl. Jeffrey Scott Walsh, based out of Shilo, Man., with 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was shot in a friendly fire incident, just days after arriving in Kandahar to begin his tour of duty. He arrived in Kandahar less than a week earlier.
Aug. 5: Master Cpl. Raymond Arndt of the Edmonton-based Loyal Edmonton Regiment was killed when a G-Wagon making a supply run collided with a civilian truck. Three other Loyal Edmonton Regiment soldiers were also injured in the crash.
Aug. 3: Corporal Christopher Jonathan Reid, based in Edmonton with the 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was killed in a roadside bomb attack. Later the same day, Sgt. Vaughn Ingram, Cpl. Bryce Jeffrey Keller and Pte. Kevin Dallaire were killed by a rocket-propelled grenade as they took on militants around an abandoned school near Pashmul. Six other Canadian soldiers were injured in the attack.
Jul. 22: A suicide bomber blew himself up in Kandahar, killing two Canadian soldiers and wounding eight more; the slain soldiers were Cpl. Francisco Gomez, an anti-armour specialist from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Edmonton, who was driving the Bison armoured vehicle targeted by the bomber's vehicle, and Cpl. Jason Patrick Warren of the Black Watch in Montreal.
Jul. 9: Corporal Anthony Joseph Boneca, a reservist with the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment based in Thunder Bay, Ont., was killed as Canadian military and Afghan security forces were pushing through an area west of Kandahar City that had been a hotbed of Taliban activity.
May 17: Captain Nichola Goddard, a combat engineer with the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery and Canada's first female combat death, was killed during battle against Taliban forces in the Panjwaii region, 24 kilometres west of Kandahar.
Apr. 22: Four soldiers were killed when their armoured vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb near Gombad, north of Kandahar. They were Cpl. Matthew Dinning, stationed at Petawawa, Ont.; Bombardier Myles Mansell, based in Victoria; Lieut. William Turner, stationed in Edmonton, and Cpl. Randy Payne of CFB Wainwright, Alta.
Mar. 28-29: Private Robert Costall was killed in a firefight with Taliban insurgents in the desert north of Kandahar. A U.S. soldier and a number of Afghan troops also died and three Canadians were wounded. Costall was a member of 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, based in Edmonton. An American inquiry, made public in the summer of 2007, determined Costall was killed by friendly fire.
Mar. 5: Master Cpl. Timothy Wilson of Grande Prairie, Alta., succumbed to injuries suffered in the LAV III crash on March 2 in Afghanistan. Wilson died in hospital in Germany.
Mar. 2: Corporal Paul Davis died and six others were injured when their LAV III collided with a civilian taxi just west of Kandahar during a routine patrol. The soldiers were with 2nd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
Jan. 15: Diplomat Glyn Berry was killed and three soldiers injured by a suicide bomber in Kandahar. They were patrolling in a G Wagon.
2005
Nov. 24: Private Braun Scott Woodfield, Royal Canadian Regiment, was killed in a traffic accident involving his light-armoured vehicle (LAV III) northeast of Kandahar. Three others soldiers suffered serious injuries.
2004
Jan. 27: Corporal Jamie Murphy died and three soldiers were injured by a suicide bomber while patrolling near Camp Julien in an Iltis jeep. All were members of the Royal Canadian Regiment.
2003
Oct. 2: Sergeant Robert Alan Short and Cpl. Robbie Christopher Beerenfenger were killed and three others injured when their Iltis jeep struck a roadside bomb outside Camp Julien near Kabul. They were from 3rd Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment.
2002
Apr. 18: Sergeant Marc Leger, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer, Pte. Richard Green and Pte. Nathan Smith were killed by friendly fire when an American fighter jet dropped a laser-guided 225-kilogram bomb on the soldiers during a training exercise near Kandahar. All served with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
CANADA'S TROOPS KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN
Portraits of Honour (Canadian Forces) 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJY2rWt29YQ
The hand painted Portraits of Honour 10' x 50' mural features the faces of the 157 Canadian Forces troops who have lost their lives while serving in Afghanistan.
The Portraits of Honour National Tour will travel across Canada starting June 1, 2011.
For more information, visit www.portraitsofhonour.ca
or call 1-888-9-HONOUR
comment:'
Visited Dave at the studio, there are now 158 portraits on the canvas.
Amazing tribute.
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CANADA'S SGT.ELTON ADAMS- wrote the first song on PTSD (2008-2009) to make us aware of haunted souls of our troops with PTSD
The Battle of the mind - Operational Stress & PTSD
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Mental health issues for soldiers, police up 47% since 2008
Over 16,000 veterans, soldiers and RCMP officers on disability for mental health conditions
By Kathleen Harris, CBC News
Posted: May 1, 2013 5:01 PM ET
The number of soldiers and RCMP officers suffering from mental health injuries such as post-traumatic stress disorder has skyrocketed over the last six years, driven in part by the gruelling decade-long combat mission in Afghanistan.
Data provided to CBC News Network's Power & Politics from Veterans Affairs Canada shows the number of veterans, soldiers and federal police officers receiving disability benefits for mental health conditions has swelled to 16,206 at last count, from just over 11,050 in 2008. That marks an increase of 47 per cent.
Source: Veterans Affairs CanadaSource: Veterans Affairs Canada (CBC)
Second World War and Korean War vets with mental health problems is the only group that saw their caseload decline, and that is due to an aging population. There are now 1,932 "traditional" veterans of that era with PTSD and other mental disorders, down from 3,036 six years ago
Veterans Affairs did not have a figure immediately available on the costs of benefits and services to individuals with mental conditions, but the Defence Department spends about $50 million a year on mental health services.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay has described the care of ill and injured soldiers as his "number 1 priority."
A statement from MacKay’s office to CBC News said the Armed Forces has made "tremendous strides" in supporting personnel who suffer from deployment-related mental health conditions like PTSD.
"Post-traumatic stress disorder and depression are a priority focus for military health programs because they are the most common operational stress injuries," he said. "Canada is now recognized as a world leader in fighting stigmatization and raising awareness of mental health illnesses. In fact, we have the greatest ratio of mental health care workers to soldiers in NATO."
The data also shows the number of Mounties suffering with mental disorder has also spiked to 2,674 cases from 1,427 in the last six years.
COMMENT:
Serious stuff and it's foolish to take it lightly. These folks deal with lots of stressful things full on. We're also seeing a similar toll on those that work in the front lines of health care and social services.
Sometimes I wish we all could just slow down a bit. Rush and stress is taking a toll on everybody.
BEST COMMENT OF THE DAY:
COMMENT:
This isn't an indication that there is more mental illness, but an indication of more people willing to admit that they need help.
More power to them. This world needs to realize that mental illness is just that, an illness like any other illness.
If any of think that you are not feeling quite right, not sleeping, eating too much or not at all. See your doctor!
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Canada- SUICIDES- in our Military
The Soldiers Song by Devon S.
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WOUNDED WARRIORS.CA- Amazing Grace
CANADA: "Freedom" Support our troops
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The Purpose (Get Up Weary Soldier)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaRI0VSyjps
I'd prefer to be a poster girl- on the wrong side of the world....... because I wish the wrong side of the world had our rights......the actual fight 4 freedom- Aussie Poster Girl is the Vera Lynn song that reflected WWII- it's passion of r troops over callous judgements; and deep caring 4 children who have no other chances outside our Nato troops fighting and dying 4 simple basic freedom-
-u wave placards and scream freedom- our troops actually fight and die 4 freedom.
Aussie Digger Tribute : POSTER GIRL (this beautiful brave song and words- fit all Nato troops..... God bless u all)
AUSSIE TRIBUTE- BECCY COLE- POSTER GIRL 4 AUSSIE DIGGERS
When Johnny Comes Marching Home-Dolly Parton- America ...America
UK-Australia-New Zealand-The Soldiers with Robin Gibb - I've Gotta Get A Message To You [Official Video]
Save-A-Vet Rescues Hero MWD Dexter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5X8UG8zwUQ
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CANADA IS BILINGUAL- ENGLISH-FRENCH- ACADIAN
Cadets Canada-Quebec 2013: Think you Got what it takes - Quebec 2013: Vous pensez avoir ce qu'il faut?
http://www.youtube.com/user/cadetsca
About Cadets Canada
The aim of the Cadet Program is to develop in youth the attributes of good citizenship and leadership, promote physical fitness and stimulate the interest of youth in the sea, land and air activities of the Canadian Forces.
Le Programme des cadets vise à développer chez les jeunes les qualités de civisme et de leadership, à promouvoir la forme physique et à stimuler l'intérêt de la jeunesse pour les activités maritimes, terrestres et aériennes des Forces canadiennes.
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COMMENT:
The Cadet programs- air force, army, navy and Rangers is the finest - teaches math, science, discipline, respect, loyalty, dignity, pride, environment, precision, comradarie... what could be better 4 Canadian boys and girls... oh yes and did I foget intelligence, leadership and the personality of becoming a learner all their lives- education rules with them.... how's that 4 a good day 4 Canada- God bless our Cadets and Rangers
By Peter MacKay
Cadets organizations across Canada play an important role in promoting good citizenship, leadership, community service and physical fitness among young Canadians. I believe in the merits of this program and the benefits it provides to Canadian communities are unparalled. In fact, the Cadet program is the best youth development program in Canada. It is regrettable that some oppostion members attempt to misinform canadians scare our fine young cadets, and their parents. As I informed the House of Commons, "I can assure the House that the cadet program will continue to enjoy the important use of gliders." There are to be no reductions in resources allocated to the Cadet glider program or any Cadet program. The Cadet program is here to stay.
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Air Cadets - Canada
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjdxPfp0uwk
Halifax 57 Rescue presents the Canadian Air Cadets. Featured in this video from the National Aviation Museum in Ottawa, Canada at the 2011 Battle of Britain Ceremonies, they talk about what it's like to be a Cadet. A Dunrobincastle.com Video
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AND.. IDLE NO MORE CANADA- young Warriors of the North
Canadian Junior Rangers at Kananaskis, Alberta 2012.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5hbwPNPAo
Video about the great week the Canadian Junior rangers had at Tim Horton's Children Foundation camp, at Kananaskis, Alberta.
During that week, Junior Rangers were involved in different activites in which the main goal was to meet fellow Junior Rangers and devellop foundations of organisation and leadership.
Vidéo amusante impliquant les Canadian Junior Rangers au Camp "Tim Horton's children foundation" .
Les jeunes ont pû démontrer leur compétence de base en matière d'organisation et de leadership élémentaire .
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Junior Canadian Rangers learn from elders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weLOL8fckNY
Program teaches Northern youth new skills at Camp Okpiapik.
Episode 548
For more information on the Canadian Army and other videos visit: http://www.army.forces.gc.ca
All comments are subject to our terms of Acceptable Use, available online at http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/land-ter.... Teaser fr+
Subscribe to our YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/CanadianA...
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Canadian Cadets play: Every Day I'm Shufflin'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0UgbAaaNTk
The Canadian cadets just seem to do things... Right. Excuse my unwanted commentary and shaky hands.
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FINALLY - Canadians get a fair deal like USA and Europe, and Asia- fair prices and no more highjacking our rights as the purchasers..... of .... products....
LETHBRIDGE: Don’t come crying to me, Canadian telcos
August 9, 2013 - 5:49pm By GAIL LETHBRIDGE
Spare us the crocodile tears, Canadian telcos.
And while you’re at it, you can shed the Captain Canada cloak and tone down the "woe is me" rhetoric over those Big Bad American corporations.
Your pitch for the hearts and minds of the Canadian public comes off as a little self-serving.
The thing is, Rogers, Bell and Telus, you don’t have our goodwill. You had all the power in the relationship between you and the Canadian cellphone user, and you used it to your advantage.
You had government regulation on your side for some 30 years. Foreign ownership restrictions worked in your favour. And rather than generating a healthy competition among yourselves, you decided to form a club and milk the thing.
You became three heads on one beast. Oligarchs. Your shareholders benefited from this arrangement and Canadian cellphone users paid — through the nose. For a while, we had the highest cellphone rates in the industrialized world.
But did that worry you? No.
For years, you pillaged us with astronomical charges, add-on fees and poor service. Want to see the otherwise polite and docile Canadian go wild? Just mention the words "roaming charges" and watch us.
When we screamed and complained about it, you three just shrugged. It just sort of sucked to be us — the Canadian cellphone user, didn’t it?
But we had no choice — unless, of course, we didn’t want a cellphone. That was our choice.
And the bills kept coming. And so did the bad service. Oops, did we overcharge you for that?
Oh, and sorry if you have to climb up on the railing of your cottage deck in order to squeeze out one measly bar of signal to make your important call, which gets dropped because the signal faded. Canada is a big country, you know. We can’t be everywhere.
Somewhere along the way, the government heard our cries and decided it was time for you so-called free-enterprisers to engage in real competition. So they opened up the spectrum of radio frequencies dedicated to cellphone to small foreign owners.
Now we have the possibility of the big U.S. company Verizon buying up the small foreign companies that couldn’t compete against the dominance of the Big Three. If this happens, Verizon could purchase that part of the spectrum not available to Canadian telcos and go into competition.
And that’s got you mollycoddled Canadian telcos running scared.
So we have the charm offensive with the full-page newspaper ads. We see you trying to humanize yourselves with the fresh faces of employees worrying about Canadian jobs and unfairness. They speak directly to you and me — Canadian to Canadian.
Not included in this public-relations campaign would be one of your customer service representatives I spent an hour with on the phone recently. He was working in a call centre in India. Then again, he was probably outsourced rather than working directly for one of you. So that wouldn’t count as taking Canadian jobs, would it?
The sad part of this that you have a point when you say the playing field is uneven. The rules aren’t fair. You should have the same access to the spectrum as a foreign buyer. And vice versa. Funny how we didn’t hear you complaining all these years when the foreign ownership rules were stacked in your favour.
Now you want us to rally around our Canadian identity to save Canadian jobs against that bad American corporate giant who is moving in to threaten your club.
It’s a tough sell — generating sympathy for yourselves after all those years of bad vibes between us. You may want to reflect on that a little.
In the meantime, this is a good time for government to act decisively and get rid of foreign ownership rules for wireless. That might give us the competition, prices and service we deserve.
Gail Lethbridge is a freelance writer in Halifax.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1146875-lethbridge-don-t-come-crying-to-me-canadian-telcos
comment:
Gail, you are so right on with this column. You have said it all. I have wanted to write in since this inundation of the "Big Three" with this nauseous concern with their workers. Funny how the threat of competition has them running scared. The first words from Ma Bell's mouth was "well we'll have to lay people off". Bring on Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T, bring them all on.
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Impaired driving: Victims know it’s never worth the risk
August 9, 2013 - 5:06pm By THE CHRONICLE HERALD
http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/1146858-impaired-driving-victims-know-it-s-never-worth-the-risk
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