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I get the vast majority of my identity from my father.
A recent high school dropout already living on his own, he walked into the Recruiting Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to enlist in the Canadian Armed Forces. It was 1984. Later that month, he reported for training in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia. His military career would take him across the country and beyond: from Alert in the Northwest Territories to Selfridge, Michigan; from flood relief in Manitoba to peacekeeping missions in Macedonia and Kosovo.
He moved frequently within Canada, eventually landing in Chilliwack, British Columbia, where he met my mother. After a rushed wedding—forced by the urgency of an imminent posting, since only spouses could accompany a service member—the couple settled in BC, living in military housing until I was born. Just a month later, we were posted to Winnipeg, where we stayed until the birth of my sister in 1992. My father arrived from Alert just weeks before she was born.
In December 1999, just days before my tenth birthday, he was deployed to Kosovo. By the time I turned thirteen, he had missed more of my birthdays than he had been there for.
Do I resent him? Never.
My teenage self may have used his absence as an excuse for adolescent rebellion—but, in truth, my defiance was never as wild as I imagined it to be. It was during that Kosovo deployment that I really began to notice. I remember the night before he left. It was his longest deployment to date. My sister and I still shared a room; she was asleep on the top bunk while I lay wide awake below. The house was quiet, but I knew he would be gone within hours. I cried.
My mom, hearing me from across the hall, nudged my father awake and encouraged him to come comfort me. My conservative, reserved father didn’t know what to do. But he came. He climbed in behind me, wrapped an arm around my shoulder, and assured me that he didn’t want to leave—but he’d be home before I knew it.
He was gone for nine months.
Coincidentally, that’s when I began grinding my teeth.
When we heard machine gun fire over the phone just before the line went dead, I was too young to understand. Too young to know I should have been afraid.
Now I understand.
I understood enough, even then, to make a decision: I would never marry someone in the Armed Forces. I had already given up pieces of myself to that life, and I wouldn’t ask my children to do the same.
In my Grade 8 year, we found out we were being posted to Edmonton—just ten months before my father’s retirement. Rather than uproot the family again, he moved into the barracks—glorified dorms with shared bathrooms and public kitchens—and came home on weekends. During that time, he took night classes at NAIT in power engineering.
My father officially retired from service in 2004. We thought that was the end.
But trauma doesn’t end with a career. It lingers like a specter—silent, unwelcome, hovering in the corners of everyday life. It was the uninvited guest at every family dinner, the heavy silence in familiar rooms. It was ignored until it forced us to listen. The memories returned, trickling back slowly.
His greatest fear wasn’t what the military had done to him—it was what it might do to us.
To my sister and me.
But we never blamed him.
What did I inherit from him?
Resilience.
The kind that holds steady under pressure. I’ve never doubted my ability to achieve what I set my mind to. I don’t second-guess my choices. I am loyal—fiercely so—until someone gives me a reason not to be. I will carry a grudge to the grave.
My father doesn’t bear many visible scars. Just a steady ringing in his ears, and post-traumatic stress disorder that went undiagnosed for another twenty years. He carried it all in silence, as so many soldiers do.
His service didn’t turn me into a soldier.
It made me something else.
Someone who values perseverance. Someone who understands sacrifice.
Someone who never forgets what it means to show up—even when it’s hard.
Even when it hurts.