Callaghan, W. (2014) "Standing on Guard - For Who?" (CASCA 2014 presentation)

Callaghan, W. (2014) Standing on Guard For Who?: The Betrayal and Retraumatization of the Canadian Veteran, paper presented at CASCA 2014 (Canadian Anthropology Society), York University, Toronto ON Canada

1

Callaghan, W.1 (2014) Standing on Guard For Who?: The Betrayal and Retraumatization of

the Canadian Veteran, paper presented at CASCA 2014 (Canadian Anthropology Society)2, 30 April 3 May 2014, York University, Toronto ON Canada.

Abstract: Ever since the First World War, a social covenant has been understood to exist between

Canada and her soldiers: the latter being willing to lay down their lives with the understanding that they

and/or their families would be taken care of by the nation should they be injured or killed, or in their old

age. Recent actions of the Harper Government have challenged the existence of this social covenant

through the perceived disrespect demonstrated by Minister Fantino (Veterans Affairs), including his

attempted bullying of an elderly veteran, and through direct comments made in preliminary hearings at a

proposed Class-Action lawsuit by veterans against the government. In the wake of these and other

events, the veterans that I have worked with over the past few years began voicing a sense of betrayal

and retraumatization, culminating with the question: what do the words We Stand On Guard For Thee really mean?

1

1 Author contact: Walter Callaghan, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 19 Russell St., Toronto ON M5S 2S2; email:

[email protected]

2 This paper was previously presented in earlier drafts at the MEDUSA 2014 Graduate Student Conference, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Toronto.


2

We Stand on Guard for Thee

Powerful iconic words from Canadas National Anthem. They are words taken to heart as a fundamental core value by the soldiers who serve in the Canadian Forces, and the

veterans who have done so previously. And these same Canadians expect that Canada, as

a nation, through the actions of her politicians and civilians, will uphold those same

values, especially when the veteran or soldier is in need. This assumed sharing of core

values and actions is frequently referred to as a social obligation. But what happens when this assumption is faulty? What happens when the expected returns from Canada to

her veterans is not met with the expected respect in action, but little more than empty

rhetoric? Or worse, an absolute dismissal of the social obligation that veterans expect in return for their unlimited liability, or in more common terms, their willingness to participate in actions that have an inordinate level of inherent danger, willing to sacrifice

their lives in the process? This paper will explore some of these issues, and will present

some of the outcomes that have occurred over the course of the past year in direct

response to a perceived disrespect towards veterans in both actions and words by

members of the current federal government.


3

Before we get into the main substance of this paper, a little historical review might be of

assistance to provide further context to the underlying assumptions at the core of this

paper. Since a phrase from the Canadian National Anthem is being used in this paper as

being emblematic of the assumed reciprocal association between Canada and her soldiers

and veterans, lets briefly start there. It might come as a surprise that the Anthem, originally written in French in 1880 for that years St. Jean-Baptiste Day celebrations, and translated into English in 1908, was not the official national anthem until 1980, with

the passing of the National Anthem Act under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeaus Liberal government, even though it had been in common use as an unofficial anthem since 1939.

Since anthems, symbols (like flags), and certain organizations, especially the

military, are key tools in the building of a national identity, and frequently appropriated

and used by political organizations in their attempt to brand themselves and manipulate

populations through the joint actions/outcomes of nationalism and patriotism, it is

perhaps quite important to realize how recently it was that Canadas National Anthem only legally became O Canada. Likewise, the identity of a nations military, its history (glorious or not), and the association with or support for the military, is also

frequently a key aspect of nationalism.


4

In the case of Canadas military (which I will frequently refer to in the short-form of the CF for Canadian Forces [and although the name has been recently changed by the Harper government in yet another act of rebranding national icons, I will stick with the

name of the organization under which I served for nearly a decade]), the close ties

between the two nation and soldier can be traced back to Prime Minister Sir Robert Bordens Coalition government in 1917. Canadas sacred obligation can indeed be traced back further, being in principle the same as the Military Covenant that was recognized to

exist between the Crown & British Empire and all who served in the British military

since the 16th

century and it should be remembered that in the First World War, while Canadas military served as a distinct element, we were technically fighting as Commonwealth soldiers under the British Crown. These social obligations, or covenants,

form the basis on which soldiers are willing to take up arms and fight, and possibly die,

for a nation the obligation from the Crown, on behalf of the Nation and her people, is that the soldier, or their family, will be taken care of should the soldier die or become

wounded in the course of serving in the military.


5

It was therefore a cause of much concern to have the current Harper government disavow

any such social obligation or covenant in response to a legal action that was initiated last

year by several severely disabled veterans who were seeking judicial relief through a

proposed class-action lawsuit over the change in benefits that occurred in 2006 with the

transition from the Pension Act to the New Veterans Charter. Indeed, the lawyers

representing the government argued that Bordens comments about the existence of a social obligation or covenant were little more than political rhetoric with no requirement

for any subsequent government to live up to any part of such an implied covenant.

Talk about a slap in the face. Here we have soldiers who have willingly gone into

harms way at the whim of different governments, sometimes even when they did not personally believe in the missions they were sent on or the conflicts that they were

ordered into. They fulfilled their duty, many at the cost of life or health, with the

expectation that they or their families would be cared for should something happen to

them. And this obligation was upheld since the First World War admittedly not always to the extent expected, and frequently only after significant maneuvering through a

bureaucracy (Veterans Affairs Canada) that seemingly operated under a denial-by-design

administrative process, but the covenant was recognized as existing until the Harper government. A government that is perceived by many soldiers and veterans as having

wrapped itself in their blankets and which has consistently thrown forth a political

rhetoric that attempts to use the soldiers and veterans as little more than pawns in a

political game of chess, rebranding themselves as the only government that really cares

about the wellbeing of those who have served the nation, and co-opting grass-roots

support structures and symbols such as Red Fridays and the Yellow Ribbon campaigns.


6

The challenge of We support the troops, why dont you became a near-constant refrain of base political rhetoric from 2006 until even this week with the return of the last of

Canadas soldiers who had been deployed to Afghanistan. And here is where the sense of betrayal occurred for many of my informants, and many more soldiers who have actively

posted in the digital community that connects veterans across the nation. How can the

soldiers believe any of the current rhetoric or promises and claims of better treatment when the core covenant dictating that treatment has been disavowed disavowed as recently as this past Tuesday in documents released by the government in response to the

ongoing legal action that once again affirm that the governments position is that no such covenant exists!


7

Turning back to the basis of the covenant, these obligations are also closely connected to

the core values of the social organization of the military, core values that are instilled and

reinforced into the soldier from the very first day of recruit training. And it must also be

remembered that the process of military indoctrination does very much entail some form

of obliteration of the pre-military social life of the individual, replacing the civilian with the soldier. And here it is perhaps important to look at the core values and ethical principles encoded within the soldier identity, and reinforced throughout the life of the

soldier, frequently carried over into post-military life. In a total institution such as the

military, these values and ethics are even more all-encompassing than in civilian life ---

they become life itself in many ways; and certainly, there are strict rules, discipline, and

punishment that can swiftly follow any perceived breach of these values and ethics.


8

Quite a different story or experience than that seen in the civilian world, where while

there may indeed be social repercussions, and occasionally legal ramifications, there is

not nearly as strict of a required adherence to social norms, values, or ethics.

And here again we see actions that were perceived as being contrary to these ethics

and values. For the soldier, because the core values instilled in them are held to such a

high level, it is expected by them that those that they deal with, especially those in

positions of authority and power (not necessarily the same things) fail to act in

accordance with those values and ethics.

Three key moments from January and February 2014 highlight this discord.


9

On 27-January, Minister of Veterans Affairs, Julian Fantino, was scheduled to meet with

a group of veterans to discuss the closure of several Veterans Affairs offices. Fantino

repeatedly delayed the meeting, at one point sending in three other MPs to try and placate the veterans. When Fantino finally made an appearance, late in the afternoon,

just before the veterans were to hold a press conference on what had happened, the

situation went from bad to shit just got real. In a very undiplomatic moment, Fantino stood over one of the veterans, an elderly veteran who had served in the Second World

War, and attempted to bully him. The veterans calm and stoic demeanour, something that is also trained into soldiers from their first day of recruit training, was apparently

misunderstood by Fantino, until the veteran looked up at Fantino, and in one iconic word,

issued a battle-cry that resonated across and throughout the veteran and still-serving

communities: Hogwash!


10

Several days later, on 2-February, Fantino made further comments that only added more

fuel to the fire. In the face of growing criticism and anger at the attempted bullying, the

perceived disrespect demonstrated in his attempted intimidation, and the growing sense

of betrayal, Fantino declared that the veterans were little more than pawns of the Public

Service Union.

These acts by Fantino led to more than a few rash comments by several members

of the veterans community, and also initiated a crisis amongst others who were already at

the tattered ends of their ability to cope as a result of their post-traumatic stress disorder a condition that in some was a direct result of what I have previously referred to as a

moral injury and in these cases, the act of betrayal, and act that flies in the face of the core values and ethics of the soldiers, created a situation where retraumatization was

certainly possible. Even for those who had found some level of stability and successful

coping strategies, the attack and dismissal of their core values led them to once again

question the very core of their being.


11

This leads to the third instance that I wish to briefly cover the comments made by the Conservative MP for Renfrew-Nippising-Pembroke, Cheryl Gallant; and it should be

noted that CFB Petawawa, one of the larger bases in Canada, is in this riding. In

response to other criticisms that had been leveled at the government, and at the leadership

of the CF, that for a soldier to step forward and ask for help dealing with their PTSD was

nothing more than career-suicide. Gallant challenged back that this was a fallacy, that no

soldier was being dismissed from the military as a result of their psychological distress,

that The widely held belief among soldiers that admitting to post-traumatic stress can jeopardize their careers is little more than a figment of their imaginations the stigma that has to be overcome is a stigma within themselves. The conversation at the heart of this matter was given more attention because of the numerous suicides that had occurred

within the military between December 2013 and March 2014.


12

Before I continue, I should point out this those in this image are those who died in service

to Canada while serving in Afghanistan. I decided for a number of ethical reasons

against using pictures of those who have since taking their lives through an act of suicide.

However, every single one of these deaths has still hit the veteran community, as a whole

and individually, particularly hard, given the close knit nature of soldiers, even those who

never met in person incidentally, this is also why Fantinos attempted bullying of an elderly veteran received such an angry response. Gallants comments, potentially an ill-thought-out wording at best on her or her staffs part, seemed to indicate that the problems that soldiers were facing were of their own making, that those of us who came

before and had experienced the end of our careers as a direct result of speaking out, were

fear-mongering and lying. Again, so much for upholding the core values that became the

foundation of our ethical lives and again, a betrayal and dismissal of those values by those who are assumed to have similar if not identical moral foundations.

Much has been said in the past few years about the difficulty that soldiers have in

transitioning from a military to a civilian life at the end of their careers, and a number of

programs are supposedly in existence to assist in that transition. But something that is


13

not discussed or acknowledged in association with this transition is that there does seem

to be a fundamental difference in the underlying core values and ethics between military

and civilian society. Because of the way that the military code exists in the ethical

imagination and lived-life of the soldier, it should be expected that those same values

would carry over through transition. Unlike the uniform, the core values of an individual

are not simply taken off, hung up, and/or turned in they remain as the guiding principles of life. And when those values are so clearly challenged, and outright

dismissed, there are repercussions, both for the individual experiencing this existential

trauma and for those who are perpetrating this trauma. For those already experiencing

transient, recurrent, or ever-present psychological distress, and who were betrayed with

the loss of the life they knew for having the strength to ask for help, this new existential

trauma or moral injury can become quickly overwhelming. That no drastic and severe

situations occurred as a result of the incidents laid out in this paper: the disavowal of any

social covenant, the acts of bullying, the claims that we had been misled and were just

puppets of a union, and the blaming of continued trauma on those suffering psychological

distress that there have only been a handful of incidents involving the police as a result is exceptional but then, we also dont truly know how many soldiers and veterans simply gave in to their demons as a direct result of these acts of betrayal and the

subsequent moral retraumatization.


14

To the fallen your sacrifices and the betrayal you suffered will not be forgotten. You will be remembered.

Callaghan, W. (2014) "Standing on Guard - For Who?" (CASCA 2014 presentation)

Documents

Transcript of Callaghan, W. (2014) "Standing on Guard - For Who?" (CASCA 2014 presentation)