“We never got caught, even though they knew who did it…”

“Don’t discount your own voice, it’s a vital component in the symphony played by the orchestra that is the CAF.”

“The war in Ukraine is not a video game or a movie, it’s real life. It’s not some actor playing a character, it’s a real man or woman who is going to be killed in a horrible violent way.”

“The Royal Military College in Kingston was founded in 1874 and the Canadian Airborne Regiment in 1968. We disbanded one that was found have systemic cultural problems after just 27 years, perhaps after 148 years it’s time we do it to the other”

“Just like at the outset of every other major conflict it has ever entered, it will be woefully unprepared. So what?”

“...deep in the heart of National Defence and the dimly lit corners of the Prime Minister’s Office, hushed conversations are deciding what should be done with Major-General Dany Fortin.”

“These are the battlefields where the great veteran heroes of this war send scathing, self-righteous, opinionated salvos back and forth at one another with nearly complete anonymity.”

The reason, I was told, “the selection process is stringent so as not to water down the significance of the award.”  

“As the years slipped by the other portraits changed frequently, but never hers. Queen Elizabeth II and her watchful, regal eyes never faltered.”

“The Snowbirds are, & will always be a Canadian icon, but in terms of recruiting value & relevance in a world of 5th gen fighters, Top Gun: Maverick, and Miles Teller's moustache, their best days are far behind them...”

If you're not advancing the organization to achieve the vision, then in the words of the rapper Ludacris, “move bitch, get out the way!”

“We need the collective opinion of our country, decided in a referendum, to answer the questions legitimately and definitively about how the Canadian Armed Forces, are employed and equipped”

“Aside from a cow with a particularly odd “moo”, whose story I will leave for one of my friends to tell, the location was surreal.”

“is this all that is left of the nation that stormed Vimy Ridge after every other great allied nation failed?”

“I know I’m not truly leaving Afghanistan behind. I brought it back, and it lives with me now.” 

“the people in the CAF are by far the most impressive asset of organization, but also its greatest enemy”

“all we heard was the M/Cpl asking us in a loud, incredulous voice if we were born stupid or did we study hard to become stupid.”

This is a departure from my normal writing, it’s not a veteran story but rather an opinion piece I felt compelled to write given the war that has erupted in Ukraine.

“…first morning inspection of battle school, always a great time for the staff (I know that now haha) and always a near pant shitting first exposure for new guys.”

Is using your identity as a veteran to influence public opinion to align with your own personal beliefs an expropriation of values and the reputation of the CAF which afforded you that status?