Archive for 2008

Second World War veteran Phil Bradbury, 85, of Toronto was surprised to learn that in civilian life he’d been missing in action for a couple of decades. Veterans Affairs Canada has been looking for veterans like Bradbury who qualify for, but aren’t receiving benefits under the Veterans Independence Program. The VIP helps aging veterans live independently as long as possible by providing home care support like housecleaning and shovelling walkways, making meals and help with bathing, as well as home adaptation and health support services. Bradbury was on the crew of a bomber that flew 34 missions near the end of [...]

“It’s an insult,” says Gerry Pumphrey of the RCMP Veterans Association in Nova Scotia, who’s worked on the issue for more than five years. “I’m disgusted. It’s always ‘next spring, next fall.’ And the thing is, there are people dying who need this help.” There are approximately 6,000 RCMP members and RCMP veterans receiving disability pensions, but not all of those would want or qualify for VIP, says Murray Brown, chairman of the RCMP serving members’ occupational health and safety committee. Roughly 225 RCMP veterans die each year, and “if only 10 per cent were eligible,” says Pumphrey, “you have about 25 [...]

The Veterans Independence Program (VIP) has changed a lot since its introduction in 1981—and The Royal Canadian Legion has been there every step of the way. The program was implemented to help Veterans Affairs Canada handle a looming crisis in availability of long-term care beds due to aging of war service veterans. At the time, options were limited for seniors unable to live independently, and there was great reliance on long-term care facilities. “There was a concern in the late 1970s that in the absence of an alternative, the Second World War veteran was literally going to swamp the system of [...]

What follows are brief snapshots from a week in the life of one small Canadian outpost in Afghanistan—Haji Beach—in April 2008. It is a story of roads closed and being built, of enemy ambushes and the confusion and daily frustrations for soldiers at the sharp end of a war that’s very hard to see clearly, even when you’re right in the middle of it. The Enemy is Real In a random grape field in Panjwai, Afghanistan, early last spring, two Canadian patrols linked up and hunkered down as the war revealed itself on every side. About a kilometre northwest, an enemy force attacked [...]

The timing couldn’t have been better for the 2008 Royal Canadian Legion National Youth Athletic Championships. On the same weekend that Canada’s top junior athletes were gathering for the Legion competition in Sherbrooke, Que., Canada’s top senior athletes were joining the world’s best to gather in Beijing, China, for the 2008 Olympic Games. And just as many of the athletes at the Aug. 7-12 Legion event were looking forward to London in 2012, many of the athletes in Beijing could no doubt look back at their own youthful trips to the Legion national track and field event. With all this in mind, the [...]

Helping commonwealth veterans has been the heart of the Royal Common­wealth Ex-Services League (RCEL) for almost 90 years; but helping when the need becomes overwhelming can lead to despair in the most resolute of volunteers. Yet the message from delegates at the 30th Triennial Conference of the RCEL in Accra, Ghana, was loud and clear: We carry on regardless, because it is unthinkable not to do so. They will tell you that it is unthinkable not to offer support in Zimbabwe where veterans suffer both political and economic hardships under the brutal regime of President Robert Mugabe. It is un­thinkable not [...]

George Tsioros—proprietor of the Olympic Food and Cheese Mart in Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market—can tell you the story of his life in a sentence, which is a small miracle of brevity when you consider that he was born in Greece, that he is now 64 years old, that he has run his own business since age 18 and that he has more than 600 different cheeses packed into his 75-square-metre (800-square-foot) shop, some of which sell for $100 a kilogram. “I came to Canada when I was 16,” he says. “I got off the boat in Montreal, caught a train [...]

Why would a well-respected surgeon from a prestigious Canadian university decide, in his early 50s, to enlist in the Canadian Forces Health Services Group (CFHS)? “It’s about the best surgical unit in Canada and I wanted to be a part of it, and the way to be a part of it is to join up,” says Dr. Vivian McAlister, a professor of surgery at the University of Western Ontario in London, who is now also a major who has served with 1 Canadian Field Hospital in Afghanistan. The medical professionals who have responded to recent intensified recruiting efforts by the Canadian Forces [...]

Norm Carnell has his eye on a big rock about two feet under the surface of water in Lake Joseph. The Royal Navy veteran makes his cast out towards that and then waits. It’s not long before his line begins to stretch and his fishing rod bends. A big smile lights up his worn face as he reels in a rock bass the size of his hands. He skilfully removes the hook from the fish’s mouth and tosses the squirming creature back into the water. “I’ve been fishing all my life,” says the long-term resident of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in [...]

These engineers say jokingly that they tell their wives and daughters that they’re in Afghanistan working as cooks, or building wells, or fixing schools, or anything other than what they really do. They call it “recce by kaboom” and it could well be the worst job in Afghanistan. With the threat of improvised explosive devices and mines extremely high, it’s the job of these brave Canadian combat engineers to drive out in front of Canadian convoys in their special blast resistant vehicles, literally proving the route safe by risking their own lives. “We also call it ‘detection through detonation,’” says a smiling Sergeant [...]