ATHABASCA — According to the 2021 census, the first in half a century to identify serving and retired Canadian Armed Forces personnel, there were 97,625 serving and 461,240 veterans.
November 11 is internationally recognized as Remembrance Day, but few take it as seriously as Canada when honouring the fallen and living men and women who don a uniform and take up the fight for freedom. From @wearethedead on Twitter, which was set up to tweet the name of a fallen Canadian soldier at 11 minutes past the hour 24 hours per day since 2011, to televised ceremonies and local legions hosting services in smaller communities.
For Boyle area resident Dean Poffley, master warrant officer (Ret.), it means so much more as a veteran who served for 28 years and saw four tours of duty, two each in former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
“I joined the forces, not just because we got paid for the adventure, but it's just such adventurous times and the people you met at the cadet camp,” he said in a Nov. 4 interview. "It just led to going into the forces and then doing the training, doing the adventure still and just serving my country.”
He had spent two weeks in British Columbia as an army cadet, taking his first plane trip from Kingston, Ontario, to Vernon, and the following year he spent six weeks at the now closed Ipperwash Cadet Camp in Ontario.
“In ‘87 I finished boot camp and then went to Camp Wainwright for a few years,” said Poffley. “My first tour was five or six years after I graduated boot camp. We went to Yugoslavia (now Union of Serbia and Montenegro) … and did a six-month tour there.”
It was a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission and a few years later, a second tour was made up of security forces.
“Keeping the factions from fighting each other,” he said. “There were talks at the higher end, of course, to make sure the war would end over there and eventually it did. There are still scars on buildings over there from their war.”
His next deployment was to Afghanistan to help train the Afghan National Army.
“That was a really interesting tour where we took the people there and trained them every day; weapons, and kit and quarters, map and compass,” said Poffley. “With our training they actually did checkpoints, and they were able to take a lot of drugs and weapons off the people that were driving around.”
It was trying to build a nation he said, giving them a taste of what Canada means and the freedom we have so the Afghani people could build on it.
“It was disappointing, very disappointing to grow relationships with the Afghans, and there's a lot of them that wanted peace in their country, and they wanted to build their country into something better, and then to have the Taliban come back,” he said.
It’s not without pride and respect in his voice he notes the Afghan people aren’t rolling over to the Taliban.
“They're still fighting to get what we have and what they want, it's freedom and freedom to do what they want, freedom of choice and they wanted to build their country,” said Poffley. “There's a lot of people who still want this, and I know that for sure.”
His second deployment to Afghanistan was more of a nation-building mission, constructing schools, building trust, and overseeing elections to ensure they were fair and democratic.
Now Poffley is watching the war in Ukraine and early on gathered supplies and took them to Edmonton to be shipped over.
“There's a lot of civilians helping with the war effort that who stayed in Ukraine that are helping with the fight just their social media,” he said. “It's pretty impressive to see. Any country that wants to fight for their freedom against the Russians is just great. That they all get together and they just want to fight for their freedom and fight for their country, that's what it's all about.”
But with Remembrance Day just around the corner and schools doing their own ceremonies, Poffley is reminded more than usual of the people he served with as well as his great grandfather, grandfather, and uncles who served in both World Wars and Korea.
“I think about it all the time actually, not just Remembrance Day, but it's good to see that everybody is putting in an effort to try to remember what our forefathers did," he said. "Just to understand it and make sure they have education about it. That's just great to see.”
Poffley had just attended the ceremony at Boyle School and said he was impressed with the students.
“I'm extremely impressed with all the kids; all grades had something to say, and they had something to do. They made wreaths, then sang songs and did the poem "In Flanders Fields,” he said. “I’m impressed with everybody at the school and the teachers that make sure the effort is made so no one forgets the sacrifices that our veterans in Canada have made.”
Poffley will also lead Remembrance Day services at the Boyle Legion.
