Dear Edmonton: To a city with love from a military spouse

Dear Edmonton,

In a couple months, we will be moving away.

Now, I know you don’t really care.  You’re a big city.  People come and go every day.  I’m sure you have better things to think about, like trying to recruit hockey players that might help your team win.

We’re just one family.  And technically, we don’t even live inside your city limits, though we shop, work and play there.  But we thought we’d let you know, we’re leaving.

It’s been fun.

Even though I had lived the 10 years previous in Calgary, I have to admit I had never been to see you before DH was posted here.  And living those 10 years in Calgary, well, honestly?  I wasn’t expecting much. 

Once I spent 18 months back and forth visiting DH before our wedding, I learned a few things.

You have a big mall.  You have a little tiny zoo.  You have roads named after hockey players and I hear you also have a team.  I never understood why but you have a really big rotating baseball bat but no baseball team.  You have Save on Foods, but no Co–op.  You have a beautiful river valley, your people work hard and it used to be really frustrating to get from the north to the south quickly.  Thanks for making that ring road right when we leave, by the way.

You also have a Canadian Forces Base.

And it is for that reason that in 2001, after I wed my love, I came to call you home.

Edmonton, I fear I knew as little as you did about the military when I got here.  Sure, my new husband wore a uniform, but that’s where that ended.

I knew, I mean, in theory, that if there was a war, he would leave.

I knew.

I mean, I had to know that, right?

If something terrible were to happen, these soldiers that called the base in Edmonton home, they would go fight for this country.  We had to have known that, right Edmonton?

And yet, as I came, a 20 year old fresh out of college Social Worker ready to take on this city, I didn’t think much of it.  DH was away a lot, soldiering competitions and exercises.  But it was still… a job.

And then, after a night shift working at your Woman’s Shelter, someone called me just as I was falling asleep at home.  A plane had crashed, that’s all they said.  I did not want to wake up.  It didn’t sound like a world changing event.

But something caused me to turn on the TV instead of going back to sleep.  Just in time to see the second plane hit.

After that, Edmonton, I think our lives changed together a little.

That base with all those soldiers just outside your borders, IT changed.

It locked down.  Activity was a flurry.  DH was away at the time and I remember not knowing for a couple days where he had ended up. 

A few months later, the entire City it seemed stood with me as I watched his bus pull away and he headed off to war.

And those next 6 months and the following years, Edmonton, I watched a city change.  Your support campaigns, your Salutes program, your pride…. that all came in time.  The first time I saw a yellow ribbon on someone who was not military I was confused.  Now they are everywhere.  When I watched you line the streets when that first bus came home in 2002… I knew you were different.

Instead of being a city that happens to have a base nearby, you became the proud home of Canadian Forces Base Edmonton. 

Do you remember in 2002 when the guys came home and you had a parade?  I remember thinking how silly it seemed to make them march through the streets for you when they had just got home.  But As I watched, I saw this was for them too.  There were thousands of you at that parade. With homemade signs and Canada flags.   And I sat on those bleachers looking around with pride.

 (And looking like I might go into labour at any second.  I finally sat on the grass in exhaustion trying to find DH when it was all done and one of your citizens searched uniforms frantically to try and find him for me just to avoid me giving birth right there.  If you look, I’m the red dress in the crowd on the right).

I’ve met a lot of amazing people.  People who have shovelled my walk for me when DH has been gone.  People who have bought DH coffee.  People who have  been there cheering at Military Appreciation days, people who have been there in silence on Remembrance Day.

And all the people who touched me, well, they weren’t always the people you might expect.

I still remember tears running down my face in the lobby of the Women’s Shelter, while homeless and exploited women with more struggles than I could even imagine held my hand as the news on the little TV showed the caption ‘Our Soldiers At War’ and I saw DH who I hadn’t heard from in 2 weeks getting off a plane onto the sand for the first time.  For a moment, I was not their care worker but they were mine, and I have never been so blessed to be surrounded by such compassion.

In April of 2002, when there were those first 4 casulaties of the war, I will never forget the feeling of walking into that memorial and looking up from where we sat as military families, to see thousands of … civilians.  People with no military connection, nothing to gain by being there.  They were there to mourn with us. 

You stepped up to the plate, Edmonton.

When I was pregnant with my first in 2002, I remember the looks of the doctors and nurses.  They didn’t understand why I was alone.  They didn’t know how to help.

By the time I had my 3rd during DH’s 3rd deployment, those same doctors and nurses had it down to an art.  How many babies had they delivered while Dad was at war?  They knew what calls to make, where computer hookups were if that was an option… I even received a homemade quilt with DH’s tour dates on it as a gift from a group of ladies who just… do that.  How amazing is that?

All of Canada has shown us some love.  Have you ever seen the Thank A Soldier website?  It blows my mind that this guy, and people like him, aren’t even military.  They just want to do something.  That’s amazing.  But Edmonton, you have shown to be among the best.

Sure, there was that time someone saw my military sticker on the car and told me my husband was a baby killer and then spat on my tires.

But you get crazies everywhere.

Those times will never out number the smiles, the handshakes, the genuine appreciation that we have seen by your people in the time we have lived here.

That very first tour, I painted a banner to hang when the guys came home and walked with other wives around the base tying ribbons.  Now, there’s people who volunteer to do that stuff. There are radio stations that cover the departures and reunions.  You tell the stories in your papers about the military competitions, exercises and training that happens on the base. You host military appreciation days at hockey and football games and well, mostly, you just make it known that you are a city proud of it’s soldiers.

You lost 40 Soldiers in this war, Edmonton.  You’ve seen so many more come back wounded.  This war hasn’t just changed the military community (and it has done that, you have no idea how much).  It’s changed you.

You had a choice, Edmonton, to pretend this war and these soldiers had nothing to do with you, or to embrace them as your own, and you stepped up.

So now, as I came as this all began, we leave as this chapter is seemingly coming to a close.

Canada’s combat role in this war is over.

Edmonton, it is so easy to forget.  It is so easy to let these past 10 years fade into the background and go back to just being a city with a base.

But you have shown you can be more.  

CFB Edmonton is home to the 1 Combat Engineers, the 1st and 3rd Princes Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, 1 Military Police, 1 Service Battalion, 742 Signals, 408 Helicopter Sqn and the Lord Strathcona’s Horse (RC) Armoured Regiment.  (And others I am sure I have missed).

Since the war began, there has ALWAYS been soldiers, either a whole battle group or individual units, deployed to fight.

And I can’t emphasise enough that even as this chapter of the war comes to an end, these soldiers will still be here.

Please.  Please, don’t forget them.

They don’t need your discounts (though they are super awesome nice).  They don’t want your sympathy or your hand outs.

Just don’t let them fade into the background of your city again.

For some families, the demons of the war are still very much a reality for them.  They deserve continued love.  For others, they will settle here into civilian lives, looks for jobs and friends and being a part of your community.  They deserve to be welcomed. Soldiers will continue to move in and out of your city as, while this combat in Afghanistan may have ended, the many many other roles and responsibilities of the soldiers of this country have not.  They will still be here and the deserve to be noticed.

And for some of us, part of this life means it’s time for us to move on.

Edmonton, it was here I learned to be an adult.  To get my first real job.  To be married.  To be a mom.

It was here I learned what it really meant to be an army wife.

I think at the same time, you learned what it really meant to be a military city.

 We’re on our way out, for now, Edmonton, but we’ll be back.

Thanks for being awesome, despite what Calgary said about you.  

~Us

So tell me , what has your city or town done that is awesome lately?

 At least tell me something… I like comments 🙂

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