Two Decent Stories about Schools Remembering AFG

[GAP]

Now if only our politicians had 1/2 as much common sense as these students do, we could avoid a lot of public hurt.

Live war message from Afghanistan
By BROOKES MERRITT, Edmonton Sun
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Alberta/2006/11/09/pf-2290493.html

Soldiers speak to local students via videolink

ST. ALBERT - The same technology used to stream live war footage into Canadian homes brought a wartime message of peace Thursday, as two local soldiers chatted to students via live videolink from Afghanistan.

As their images were projected onto a gymnasium wall, Capt. Glen Morrison and Sgt. Ernie Kuffner bowed their heads in a prayer with more than 400 students at Ecole Secondaire Sainte Marguerite d’Youville.

The pair, whose daughters attend ESSMY, appeared in a cramped yellow broadcast booth from Kandahar to share stories of their tour and answer questions from students.

Only one question was censored by principal Shawn Haggerty: Do you feel Canadians support your contribution?

“It’s a dead-end question,” Haggerty said. “Yes, these men were speaking to our students, but also directly to their wives and children, whom they haven’t seen for months.”

He’d approved the questions beforehand, but changed his mind during the videocast and quietly asked a student to skip that particular question.

“I decided at the last minute that it wasn’t the proper forum. This was about remembrance and honour, not politics.”

The three students chosen to query the soldiers in front of the entire student body agreed with Haggery’s decision.

“It was just an honour to speak with them, for them to have taken the time to talk with us. This was about peace,” said Grade 11 student Dave Henderson.

“We all knew the answer anyway,” said Roslynn Ricard, a Grade 10 student. She and Grade 10 student Jennifer Lissey said their peers are well aware of the Afghanistan conflict.

“The soldiers were very positive, they believe they are changing things there.”

As for the issue of censoring a question, the girls said Social Studies class is a better forum to debate such questions.

“And we do,” Lissey added.

During the ceremony the soldiers talked of losing friends in battle, specifically Capt. Nichola Goddard and Cpl. Francisco Gomez, with whom they were friends.

They showed a slide presentation of images from the war, including sombre ramp ceremonies.
More on link

 

[The Bread Guy]

I'm as happy as the next guy to bash media, but I think, in all fairness, it also make sense to share decent work - reward success, never pass a fault and all that.  In this spirit, here's a couple of pieces from Thunder Bay's Chronicle-Journal on local school activities around Remembrance Day & Afghanistan.  In fact, I've also sent a note to the teacher, congratulating her on her work.

Shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions, Section 29, of the Copyright Act.

The art of war
Sarah Elizabeth Brown, Chronicle-Journal, 10 Nov 06
Article Link

A McKenzie School kid’s paintbrush is memorializing another McKenzie kid for Remembrance Day.

When teachers at the Shuniah elementary school called 19-year-old Clay Breiland, asking him to paint a ceiling tile in memory of Pte. Josh Klukie, he instantly agreed.

Klukie was killed Sept. 29 in Panjwaii district, Afghanistan, in an explosion while on foot patrol.

It’s a tradition at the small, tight-knit school for Grade 8 students to paint one of the ceiling tiles in the hallway.

When she first heard the 23-year-old soldier had been killed, chief custodian Lynne Robertson went looking for Klukie’s tile, but couldn’t find his mark because his graduating class painted tiles in groups.
Robertson is a driving force behind memorial projects at McKenzie School.

Today, the school’s usual Remembrance Day ceremony will include a table of pictures of Klukie and awards he won during the decade he attended there.

Remembrance Day was always a big deal at his elementary school, Breiland recalled Thursday evening as he put the finishing touches on the tile in his family’s living room.

Now in his second year at Lakehead University, he was asked to paint the tile because his teachers remembered him as an artist.

His grandmother and mother are both artists, and he’s been drawing recognizable objects since the age of three, said mom Tine Schrijvers.

Breiland knew who Klukie was because his is a close community.

Schrijvers is an art teacher at Hillcrest High School, where her son and Klukie attended in different years.
“He was a good kid,” she said of Klukie. “A nice kid. Very polite.”

Breiland said designs have been rattling around in his brain for a while, and he started painting in earnest Tuesday. There was a dash of artistic procrastination as well, he said, smiling.

“It was kind of difficult to design a tile that would be comfortable without being cliche´d,” he said.
Wars today are so different from the world wars, the relationship between war and the media has changed and people look at war differently now, said Breiland.

And there’s such debate in Canada about the country’s role in Afghanistan, he continued.

“So I didn’t want to do something that was ignorant to all of those factors. At the same time, I didn’t want the tile to be about politics instead of Josh.”

On one side is Klukie’s military portrait. On the other is a three-strand knot between the Canadian and American flags and a yellow ribbon.

His goal, said Breiland, was to balance the national with the individual.

Klukie was in the Canadian military, an institution with a long and respected history, the young artist continued.

At the same time, there’s no ignoring the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. as the starting point of the current conflict in Afghanistan, but he didn’t want imagery from Sept. 11, said Breiland.

The yellow ribbons tie the international issues to Shuniah, where Klukie’s family lives.

Yellow ribbons festoon poles and light standards from one end of Lakeshore Drive to the other, as well as the Klukie family’s previous property on that road.



A soldier’s story
Sarah Elizabeth Brown, Chronicle-Journal, 9 Nov 06
Article Link - 1.12MB .pdf version

After a school assembly Wednesday, a handful of curious Algonquin Avenue students hung back to ask the visiting veteran questions or shake his hand.

Fit and trim, he’s not wearing a vet’s familiar navy blue blazer, but the desert-camouflage uniform he wore in Afghanistan from February to August.

And he’s only 30.

Cpl. Robin Rickards, a Lake Superior Scottish Regiment rifleman and grenadier, spoke to the school’s youngsters — all decked out in red and white — about remembering soldiers who’ve fought overseas as well as those who helped during natural disasters closer to home.

The students prepared poems, a song and a slide show, as well as a book of art and writing that will be sent to Kandahar for Canadian troops to read.

Called “Celebrating Canadian Soldiers,” the book grew from teacher Natalie Corbin’s idea of letting overseas soldiers know folks back home are thinking of them. She’d seen a Kandahar-based soldier interviewed on the news and thought how she’d feel if that was her husband with the fatigue and sadness lining his face.

Collecting the books and speaking about why a soldier serves is the sort of thing veterans have been doing for years.

“It is strange to think of oneself as a veteran,” said Rickards, who served in Afghanistan with the 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. “I suppose in a way I am a veteran.”

It’s when he remembers the Legion Prayer — especially the line “Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn” — that he feels like one.

He ticks off on his fingers the six Canadian soldiers he knew who were killed.

“It’s sort of sobering,” he said. “I appreciated it before, but now I personally know people who the years won’t condemn.”

Afghanistan was his second tour — he did a six-month stint in Bosnia three years ago, doing the same sort of work patrolling and searching for weapons.

But in Afghanistan, the situation called for combat duty once insurgents were backed into the Panjwaii district, where many of the Canadian soldiers killed lost their lives.

He and his fellow soldiers lived and worked out of the rough forward operating bases, ending the tour at FOB Costall near the Pakistan border.

After crouching down Wednesday to hear a young boy’s questions and talking with small groups, Rickards said he prefers to connect with kids that way.

They fire away with questions about everything from soldiers’ rations to whether Afghans play Nintendo.
Since returning home, he’s spoken regularly with people curious about his overseas tour.

It’s not the rigours of combat they want to know about — it’s the Afghan culture that has people at home curious, he said.

“They’re seen almost as exotic zoo creatures,” said Rickards, noting the stereotyped photos of stern-faced Afghans, some posed with rifles, some not.

It’s ironic because Afghans “crack a smile like that,” said Rickards, snapping his fingers.

“But when it comes to taking photos, it’s a very serious business.”

He has at least three offers from Afghans to go back and stay with them for a visit, but only when things are better.

Afghans know how their country is portrayed in the outside world, said Rickards.

Reporters covering Afghanistan ask to be taken to specific areas — the most devastated ones, said Rickards.

No one takes pictures of the building cranes dotting Kandahar’s skyline, he said.

There’s lots going on in the country, and Afghans want to show it off, he said, adding the hundreds of Afghan people he met in his six months there, to a person, are grateful for the world’s attention and the Canadian presence.

Not that they gave Canadian soldiers an easy time of it on the sports field.

Canadians play shirts against skins, said Rickards. There, they play soccer shoes vs. bare feet.
“If they get some ice time, Canada will never win another World Cup in hockey,” said Rickards.

There wasn’t a sport the Canadian soldiers could beat their Afghan counterparts in — despite loading their teams with ringers and behemoths — from soccer to volleyball to basketball. The Canucks couldn’t even win in bocce ball.

“And they were starting to pick up hockey when we left,” said the jovial soldier. “We could still beat them, but it was getting sketchy toward the end.”

Rickards is working full-time for the LSSR, a reserve unit slated to be part of the 38 Brigade Group contingent going overseas in 2008 — most likely to Afghanistan.

He wants to go back, and he has the experience.

“It would be negligent of me not to,” he said.

 

[Pte_Martin]

Wow good old army.ca Cpl Rickards used to be in the same unit until he and I both transferred out. He went to a different res unit and i went regs. i Didn't think I'd be hearing about him again.

 

[patrick666]

Great articles, thank you for sharing.

It's nice to see things like this and you're right, it's only fair to focus on the good as well.

 

[CADPAT SOLDIER]

Ya well in my school they just read one of those chain emails except changed the us marine part to Canadian forces,

 

[ex-Sup]

I read both articles today in the paper. We had our usual service today at school, but the mood was very different. With three Thunder Bay boys losing their lives this year it made it more poignant. I really tried to emphasize that to my students today, even doing some of my own "remembrance" activities. I hope that it made a difference.

Inter pericula 

 

[Pea]

Great articles, and awesome to see.

My little brother is the student council president for his school, so today he held their Remembrance Day ceremony. My Mom just called me to tell me about it. I have never been more proud of that little dude in my life. Sounds like they really took time to talk about what Remembrance truly means, and he made sure to touch on the fact that it's not just about the World Wars, it's about the recent hero's that have fallen as well. I'm so pleased to hear about people taking the time and initiative to properly Remember. 

 

[vonGarvin]

I went to my daughters' school today for their service.  I was in civvies because I wasn't presentable in uniform.  Not that I'm a slob, but I am on DL and I finished early and went.  Anyway, some legionairres were there, and the various grades gave presentations.  Grade 4 did "Flanders' Fields" and grade 5 (my elder daughter's class) did another poem that was written as an answer to "Flanders' Fields".  It was a very nice presentation.  Glad I could make it today.  They are accompanying me tomorrow, and yes, I will be presentable.

 

[josh]

Here's another about a school library dedication in Stittsville, Ontario to honour Sgt Marc Leger:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=be5e44a1-6041-4c7c-afdd-66d09412f854&k=54205