One Question: What have you ever done for your country?
Paul Darrow for National Post
Paulette and Robin Tedford (L) stand with Tom and Angela Reid as they visit the cenotaph in Truro, NS, Wednesday, October 28, 2009. The names of their sons, Chris Reid and Darcey Tedford, are inscribed into the Afghanistan memorial.
Graeme Hamilton, National Post
Published: Saturday, November 07, 2009
The bumper sticker on Robin and Paulette Tedford's red Ford pickup truck is as direct as they come. "If you don't stand behind our troops," it reads beneath a Canadian flag, "feel free to stand in front of them." The message might seem jingoistic and surprising in peace-loving Canada, but the sticker is a hot item in this small central Nova Scotia town, and nobody here would think to question the Tedfords' right to display it.
On Oct. 14, 2006, their youngest son, Sergeant Darcy Tedford, 32, was on patrol outside Kandahar when his light-armoured vehicle was ambushed by Taliban insurgents firing rocket-propelled grenades. He and Private Blake Williamson were killed. Born in Calgary but raised near Truro since the age of one, Sgt. Tedford was the third solider from the area to be killed in Afghanistan. Corporal Christopher Reid, 34, had died in August 2006 when his light-armoured vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, and a month later, Warrant Officer Frank Mellish, 38, was killed in fierce fighting with the Taliban. Last December saw the combat death of a fourth Truro native, Corporal Thomas Hamilton, 26, who was born in Truro and raised in Upper Musquodoboit, about 45 kilometres away.
For a town of just 12,000 people, the war in Afghanistan has taken an extraordinary toll. It should not, however, come as a surprise. A careful study of the list of the 133 Canadian soldiers who've lost their lives in Afghanistan since 2002 shows they are far more likely to have roots in a town such as Truro than in Toronto or Vancouver. Reflecting overall patterns of enlistment in the Canadian Forces, those killed hail disproportionately from Atlantic Canada and the Prairies. They are for the most part white males under 40 who come from small towns rather than major urban centres. Guys like Darcy Tedford, Chris Reid, Tom Hamilton and Frank Mellish.
As a boy growing up in the village of Earltown, Sgt. Tedford was a good student with a compassionate heart. After his death, one of his teachers gave his parents a get-well letter Darcy had sent her on his own initiative, the first his parents had heard of it. He gained an appreciation of military service at the knee of his grandfather, a former sergeant-major. His childhood games had a military bent; he built a fort in the woods surrounded by barbed wire and booby traps. "What else are you going to do in a town where there's just 10 kids?" Mr. Tedford said.
Mrs. Tedford said it was a proud day when she drove her son to Halifax so he could sign the papers after enlisting at 18. "I was glad, because I firmly believed in all the principles of the good military background and opportunities for his future and something he could do with his life," she said.
"Darcy was an amazing man," his father said. "He's so lucky." Asked to explain, Mr. Tedford, who is retired from his job at a feed mill, said: "I think Darcy's light shone a long time ago and it's still shining. He was involved in a career he liked and knew it. Not me."
Cpl. Reid joined the Nova Scotia Highlanders Reserves battalion based in Truro after high school, then enlisted in the regular forces a few years later. His parents considered the military a perfect fit for a boy who loved the outdoors. He would think nothing of hiking in the dark in the cold of winter to spend a night at the family cabin in the woods.
"We thought it was a good thing for him," his mother, Angela Reid, said of her son's decision to enlist. He enjoyed "the excitement, the vehicles and the guns, for which he always had respect," she said. He had no interest in climbing the ranks, content to remain a career corporal because "he got to play with the toys."
"He loved the army," said his father, Tom. The couple cherish a photo of Chris taken in Afghanistan with his friend, Sergeant Vaughan Ingram, who was killed in battle the same day as Chris. "If you look at his eyes, his eyes are just smiling," Mrs. Reid said. "Whatever he was doing there he was really happy about."
Cpl. Hamilton was a restless, strong-willed boy who joined the cadets while he was in high school. His brother John, four years older, did not approve of the military, but nothing was going to change young Tom's mind. His mother, Cindy Higgins, said his success as a cadet helped convince him to enlist in the regular forces, which he did before completing high school.
She had her doubts about whether he was cut out for a soldier's life. "He never liked to be told what to do, so I never figured he'd make it through basic training," she said. "He would argue with the devil. If a kid bothered him at school, he fought with them, and he was just a skinny, scrawny little thing."
But he thrived in the army and was proud to serve in Afghanistan, she said. Now she looks at one of the pictures on what she call's "Tom's wall" in her home east of Truro and marvels at how muscular he had become.
"His arms! I didn't even realize his arms were that big. I just thought he was my little boy."
Warrant Officer Mellish knew from an early age that he wanted a career in the Forces. His teenage years were spent in Summerside, P.E.I., where his father, Barry, an RCMP officer, was stationed. He joined the air cadets when he was 12, where he rose through the ranks to become senior cadet. When he was just 14, he took a shine to fellow cadet Kendra Stordy, the girl who would become his wife and also join the military. They had two children.
"I never thought of asking him, 'What made you want to join?' " Barry Mellish said.
"I said, 'I'm glad that you know what you want.' I encouraged him to be the best he could be at whatever career he was going to choose."
Truro bills itself as "the hub of Nova Scotia," but it is a hub that most people skirt around on the way to and from Halifax. The tourism kiosk at Halifax airport greets arrivals with pamphlets on attractions in every corner of Nova Scotia, but the attendant came up empty when asked for material on Truro. Even inside the hub, a motel postcard rack offered cards from Digby, Pictou and the Annapolis Valley but nothing from Truro. Statistics Canada reports that the town's median household income is well below the provincial average, and its population is homogenous. Just 5% of the population are immigrants, with few recent arrivals, and English is the mother tongue of 96% of residents. It is a place where a Chinese restaurant can call itself Hou's Takee Outee without raising eyebrows.
It is also a place where military tradition runs deep. The names of 278 townsmen who fell in the two world wars, and now Afghanistan, are engraved on the downtown cenotaph. "The attitude of people here is they support the troops 100%," said Garry Higgins, president of the local Royal Canadian Legion branch. Remembrance Day ceremonies draw between 3,000 and 4,000 people, he said. Herb Peppard, an 89-year-old veteran of the Second World War, said the respect he receives from the townspeople reflects their appreciation of the military. "I think Nova Scotia is always represented well [in the Forces] compared to its population," he said. "We get very patriotic here."
"Support our Troops" decals are common on cars in Truro. Beside his car wash outside town, Tim Jardine has created a hillock where he plants a Canadian flag for every Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan. "We lost a lot of fellas here in town," Mr. Jardine, 47, said. "I just believe we should support our troops."
Officials at the Canadian Forces recruiting centre in Halifax said a number of factors explain why the region has historically contributed a disproportionate number of new recruits. "A good number of the folks who come through our doors have relatives of one sort or another who are, or have been, in the military, so that's a big driver," Captain Ron Gallant said. The presence of military bases in Halifax, Greenwood and Shearwater means that even people with no family connection stand a good chance of coming into contact with personnel, which demystifies military service. And the Maritimes' depressed economy plays an important role. "The economic benefits to a military person in the Maritimes are pretty decent compared to what average wages are throughout the Maritimes," Capt. Gallant said.
Harder to gauge is the desire to serve one's country, but Robin Tedford believes the sentiment plays a big role. "I think the people in rural Canada anywhere are far more patriotic than the people in the cities," he said. "I think the people in the cities are in too big a hurry to go nowhere and do nothing and don't take a look around them to see what's going on. Rural people have time. It's a slower pace of life."
Tom Reid agrees and takes exception to the view that Maritimers join the military because there's no other work. "Maritimers join because it's their tradition to join," he said. "I think Maritimers are more rural people, and I think rural people have their feet on the ground more."
The families interviewed have every reason to be bitter. Ms. Higgins said she tries to bite her tongue when asked her views on the war out of respect for her son's memory. But the pain of losing her son is still fresh, and she has seen the heartbreaking impact his death has had on his four-year-old daughter. "I think they all should be brought home, myself, but who am I to say?" she said. "Tom would be really upset if he thought we didn't support them."
Mr. Mellish said his wife, Sandy, also wants the Canadian troops brought home. But a trip to Afghanistan organized by the Forces convinced him that the mission is making progress. "I don't want to see our boys and girls killed over there. Don't get me wrong. But I do support them being there trying to help someone else," he said.
The Tedfords get angry when they hear people criticizing Canada's presence in Afghanistan. "I've got one question for them: What have you ever done for your country, and what are you willing to do for it? These guys are doing it all for us, and they don't get thanked enough," Mr. Tedford said.
The Tedfords and other bereaved families from central Nova Scotia get together whenever possible, often for lunch at the Legion. They were not friends before, but a perverse benefit of the high number of local casualties is the comfort of company. "We can vent on one another. We all have something in common.... It's been very good for us mentally," Mr. Tedford said.
When the group goes out for a meal together, people in town notice. "I had one person say, 'Geez, here comes the club again,' " Mr. Tedford said.
"It's the club nobody wants to belong to," his wife added.
