‘A pathetic attempt at commemoration’: Canada’s Afghan memorial comes under fire

Vets feel overlooked as construction begins on Ottawa monument that doesn't match the mood of onetime soldiers who fought and lost friends

A rendering shows what the new memorial to those who served in the Afghan war will look like. Photo by Government of Canada / Team Stim

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Canada’s proposed Afghanistan war memorial is having trouble connecting with the people it’s designed to honour: The Canadians who fought in the 12-year war.

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Ground was officially broken on the future site of the National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan in Lebreton Flats, near Ottawa’s Canadian War Museum, last Monday. But some vets felt overlooked in a ceremony that focused on the project and not the onetime warriors, and showcased an Indigenous-inspired “Medicine Wheel” design.

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“The Ottawa bubble is an ecosystem that does what it wants. It sets up these things to say that they consulted and then go ahead and do whatever they want,” said Sean Maloney, a history professor at the Royal Military College of Canada.

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Afghanistan was the longest combat deployment in Canada’s history, but getting a monument built to honour more than 40,000 of our troops who served there will take even longer. The monument isn’t expected to be finished until late 2028.

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“This is Canada, everything takes so long,” Maloney said.

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“We can’t do anything efficiently and quickly in this country at all.”

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Former prime minister Stephen Harper committed to building the $5-million monument in 2014. But the initial proposed location at Richmond Landing to the southeast drew criticism from veterans who complained the site was isolated and difficult to access.

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MAYWAND, Afghanistan – Col. Mike Cessford (R) talks to a group of people from Hotel Company. Pictured from Right to left are Cessford, Maj. Alex Ruff, Cpl. Greg Robertson and Master Cpl. Brian McCallum. Robertson and McCallum are two of the three survivors of a LAV explosion who are back in the field. Photos by Jonathan Fowlie Photo by Jonathan Fowlie (CanWest News Se /CND_FEAT

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Conservative MP Alex Ruff, who deployed twice to Afghanistan during his military career, said the memorial’s delays have been frustrating.

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The biggest criticism Ruff’s heard from people he served with in Afghanistan is: “Why did this take so long?”

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He was at the project’s official groundbreaking last Monday, and said it “was a very solemn ceremony, well put together.” But by that afternoon, Ruff’s phone was lighting up with feedback from veterans.

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“They were a little disappointed” that Afghan vets weren’t “front and centre” at the groundbreaking, he said.

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“It was more about the project, not the actual people that the project’s designed for,” Ruff said.

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“So, when this project actually gets … built and we do the official unveiling of it, we need to do a better job.”

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Veterans Affairs couldn’t say how many Afghan veterans attended the groundbreaking ceremony last Monday.

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“However, as it was important to provide access to as many people as possible, the option of a livestream gave the opportunity to veterans and families to participate wherever they live,” Marc Lescoutre, who speaks for Veterans Affairs Canada, said in an email.

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“Veterans Affairs Canada is aiming to make the monument unveiling in 2028 accessible to as many Afghanistan veterans and families of the fallen as possible.”

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The project aims to “honour the service, sacrifice and enduring legacy of the more than 40,000 Canadian Armed Forces members, as well as hundreds of civilians and government officials who supported the mission in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014, Canada’s longest combat deployment,” according to Veterans Affairs.

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“The mission claimed the lives of 158 Canadian Armed Forces members, a diplomat, four aid workers, a government contractor and a journalist. Thousands more continue to experience enduring physical and psychological injuries.”

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Canadian soldiers carry the remains of Trooper James Pentland, 23, of Geary, N.B., into a waiting C-130 Hercules transport during a ramp ceremony held Friday, April 13, 2007, at Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan. Trooper Pentland and MCpl. Allan Stewart, 30, also of N.B., were killed in the Zhari district of Kandahar province when their vehicle was hit by an IED.Photo by Christian Laforce Photo by Christian Laforce /Christian Laforce

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The memorial has been mired in controversy nearly from the beginning.

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In 2023, the Montreal-based design team that won the juried competition to create the monument lost the commission when the federal government overruled the jury.

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They employed Former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour to make their case. Arbour, who was just named the country’s next Governor General, said at the time that federal officials chose to “cheat” the winning Team Daoust submission by ignoring their own rules in awarding the design contract to a Team Stimson submission from Alberta.

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“I think there should be a lot of concern about the integrity of procurement processes by the federal government,” Arbour said at the time.

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While a jury decided in 2021 that the Team Daoust concept for the monument was the best of five finalists, Veterans Affairs went on to conduct a survey of veterans and the general public that department officials said showed the Team Stimson concept was preferred.

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“The design, developed by Team Stimson, reflects themes of healing inspired by the Medicine Wheel. It takes the form of a circular, sacred space, a ‘home base,’ intended for reflection, remembrance and contemplation,” according to Veterans Affairs. “Four bronze flak jackets, draped on crosses, form portals around a central space. The names of the fallen (will be) inscribed on the walls of three quadrants, while the fourth quadrant, oriented towards Afghanistan, is dedicated to the Afghan people.”

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When Maloney saw the design for the memorial, “The first thing that came into my head was, is this the memorial for Aboriginal Canadian Afghanistan veterans? Or is this for everybody? Because the whole thing came across to me like it was an extension of (former prime minister Justin) Trudeau’s reconciliation agenda.”

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The monument should appeal to those who served in Afghanistan and explain why Canadians were there, said the historian.

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Maloney doesn’t claim to know what it should look like.

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“But it should reflect thematically the environment there in Afghanistan. It should reflect thematically Canada and Canada’s sacrifice in Afghanistan.”

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Maloney visited Afghanistan 11 times and wrote seven books about it. “I was nearly killed there on multiple occasions,” he said.

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While stressing this was his personal take, Maloney said the memorial’s design reflects the “Ottawa bubble,” not those who served.

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“The popular culture wants to forget we were there,” he said. “They don’t care.”

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Cpl. Matt Elliott of Dartmouth, N.S. sits in an American Blackhawk helicopter Saturday, April 28, 2007, en route from Ma’Sum Ghar to Kandahar Air Field. Cpl. Elliott cites a family tradition of serving the Canadian public in both a military and civil capacity as the major reason behind his decision to serve.Photo by Christian Laforce Photo by Christian Laforce /Christian Laforce

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For Maj. Matt Elliott, who deployed to Kandahar in 2007 as an infantry corporal, the memorial is something he’s never thought about much, but he’s glad those who were lost or injured will be commemorated.

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“I’ve had personal friends that unfortunately passed,” he said in an interview from Eastern Europe, where he’s on deployment as a military lawyer.

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“So, it will be good to go visit.”

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He’s looking forward to reading the names on the monument of his friends killed in Afghanistan, including that of Pte. Braun Scott Woodfield, 24, from Eastern Passage, N.S., who died in November 2005 when his vehicle rolled over while on patrol near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

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“But the reality of it is I think I’ve lost more since than we did during from various things, suicides and deaths of despair,” Elliott said.

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Elliott hopes the memorial will help people “remember and reflect on what the cost is of all these wars, big or small. I think those are probably two of the more important things we can do.”

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Cpl. Matt Elliott, 27, of Halifax shows his tattoos near a LAV III at Patrol Base Wilson in the Zhari district of Kandahar province Wednesday, April 25, 2007, in Afghanistan.Photo by Christian Laforce Photo by Christian Laforce /Christian Laforce

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Elliott counts himself as among “one of the fortunate ones” who came back from Afghanistan “relatively intact mentally and physically.”

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He’s sure some Afghan veterans will struggle with the idea of visiting the memorial and dredging up old memories. “For some, it might be a difficult thing that they never want to see again. For others, it might be a very welcome thing. It could be cathartic; it could be healing.”

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While some Afghan vets fear the conflict has been forgotten, Elliott isn’t in that camp. “I mean, obviously, it certainly doesn’t get the coverage that it did when we were over there. But, still being in the military, I guess I still live in that bubble a little bit where (it comes up with family and friends) quite frequently. I would like to think that it hasn’t been forgotten and I think that that this memorial is a great step towards making sure that that doesn’t happen.”

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Once it’s built, Ruff’s sure the memorial will be very moving. “I’m looking forward to seeing it completed sooner than later. But we need to do a better job of making sure we’re engaging the veterans themselves.”

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It would likely “mean much more to Canadians to share the personal stories of not this project itself or what it’s going to mean symbolically, but hear that from the veterans themselves, not from politicians,” he said.

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Ruff, who joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1993, retired as an infantry colonel in 2019.

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His military career included two tours in Bosnia and two in Afghanistan, where he led “a combat team for six months in ’07, where unfortunately we lost six soldiers on Easter Sunday on April 8, 2007, to a massive improvised explosive device.”

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Ruff still wears a washer around his neck “from when we cleaned up the site in Afghanistan in the desert where my soldiers were killed.”

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The MP for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound knows he won’t forget their sacrifice. But he fears others might.

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He believes visiting the national Afghan memorial will help veterans deal with their losses.

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“I think it is important as a nation that we pay tribute to the commitment and the dedication and the sacrifices that were made,” Ruff said.

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Canada needs “a spot for people to see and realize just the size and the commitment to the longest war really in our history,” he said.

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Ruff thinks the monument should be named for what it marks – a war, rather than simply a mission.

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“It took 20-some-plus years before the government of Canada recognized their Korean veterans as being war vets,” he said.

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“I firmly believe, as do, I’m pretty confident in saying, the other 40,000-plus Canadian Armed Forces members that served in Afghanistan, that we went to war,” Ruff said.

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“The fact that it’s just called a special duty area or a special operation area to me isn’t doing service to the Canadians that have signed the dotted line and (were) willing to make a supreme sacrifice.”

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People didn’t volunteer for the deployment to get medals on their chest, he said. Rather, they did it out of “a sense of commitment to our nation,” Ruff said.

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“They don’t want to be forgotten.”

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Retired Colonel Mark Gasparotto is pictured during one of his two tours in Afghanistan. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

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Mark Gasparotto, a retired colonel who also served in Afghanistan, compared the wait for the monument to Ottawa’s slow track record on military procurement.

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“It’s in line with how long it takes to do other things in the federal government,” said Gasparotto, a combat engineer who deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2003, before he took command of 23 Field Squadron in Kandahar during the Medusa offensive in 2006.

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“So that’s probably an indictment of how slow our decision-making processes are,” he said.

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“The timeline reflects the complexity of constructing a national monument,” Veterans Affairs’ Lescoutre responded to such complaints.

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“Throughout this monument development process, the Government of Canada has taken the appropriate steps to keep the project moving while also working to ensure we get it right at every step of the process.”

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Gasparotto is hoping that, once its built, the memorial will have “emotional impact.”

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But he won’t be spending future Remembrance Days there.

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“I go to Beechwood Cemetery, because we’re amongst the graves of the fallen, and I know many of the names on those gravestones,” he said. “So, to me, that’s a more hallowed place and a more emotionally evocative place than a memorial could be.”

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The National Military Cemetery is where many of Canada’s Afghanistan dead are buried.

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“My sense is I will continue to gravitate towards Beechwood,” Gasparotto said. “Because at Beechwood, there’s the ceremony, and then people leave, and we all get drunk amongst the graves. And we probably hang out there for an hour, hour and a half, after the ceremony is done, and it’s just the vets.”

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The group is usually about 30 strong.

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They’ll mark the passing of their fellow soldiers, including Sgt. Gregory John Kruse, a 40-year-old Canadian combat engineer killed by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan on December 27, 2008, with purpose-baked chocolate chip cookies.

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“His family actually bakes a tin of cookies and puts them on his gravestone, and so we will eat those cookies afterwards,” Gasparotto said. “It’s things like that that can never be manufactured in a formal way that make the difference.”

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He’s not blind to the Afghan mission’s failure — that Afghanistan was ultimately lost to the Taliban.

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But that doesn’t change what Canadians were trying to accomplish there, he said. “So, I remain positive about that time and when it comes to the monument, certainly I will visit it, but I don’t know that it will have the same impact for me that going to Beechwood Cemetery does.”

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Gasparotto thinks some Afghan vets will visit during trips to Ottawa to experience “a solemn, silent moment. But it doesn’t seem that it has the gravitas that, you know, a Vimy does.”

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Seeing the names of the dead on the memorial will be emotional for Gasparotto. “Because I knew them, and in some cases, I saw them fall, that’s what brings me back. That’s what really makes the connection for me.”

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Owen Sound Mayor Ian Boddy, left, Lieutenant-Colonel Christian Lillington, commander of the 4th Canadian Division Training Centre in Meaford, and Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound MP Larry Miller lay a wreath at the Owen Sound Cenotaph during a Battle of Vimy Ridge 100th Commemoration ceremony. Denis Langlois/The Owen Sound Sun Times/Postmedia Photo by Denis Langlois /Denis Langlois/The Sun Times/Pos

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Christian Lillington, a retired lieutenant-colonel who deployed twice to Kandahar, knows all too well the price Canada has paid for its fighting role in Afghanistan.

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“I lost a lot of soldiers overseas, not necessarily in combat, but when we got home, due to the mental health sort of epidemic that, you know, people sort of ignored and now is kind of silently being pushed to the side in favor of things like the Latvia mission,” Lillington said.

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He remembers how much work was involved in getting soldiers mentally prepared to re-deploy to Afghanistan. “In the end, they all got approved because it comes down to numbers, really, about force generation.”

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Lillington was among those disappointed not to see more Afghan vets at last week’s groundbreaking ceremony.

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“It almost, in my opinion, feels like they’re trying to sort of ignore and push aside something that has shaped our military,” he said.

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“It almost feels like a chapter they want to close and forget.”

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He’s not keen on the planned memorial’s design.

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“It doesn’t speak to me,” Lillington said. “It lacks character; it lacks definition.”

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Canadians tend to downplay our role in world events, he said, “especially” military ones.

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“But Afghanistan was a major push. We were highly respected by every nation who served there across the world, including the Aussies, the Brits, the Americans, like all the major players, you know, the Dutch, everyone, we were the go-to,” Lillington said.

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“Anything that went wrong, they would just send Canadians in to fix it.”

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Lillington now volunteers as an advocate for veterans.

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“This memorial is a perfect representation of how Veterans Affairs treats Afghan veterans,” he said. “It was a pathetic attempt at commemoration and a sod turning, just like it’s a pathetic attempt to say, ‘Oh, we’ll take care of veterans after their service.’ There’s nothing that a veteran doesn’t fight for because it’s a culture of no.”

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Their families wind up dealing with the stress, he said. “The more we talk about it, the angrier I get.”

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He retired in 2019 due to post-traumatic stress disorder related to his time in Afghanistan.

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“It was just assumed that I was a broken toy, pushed aside.”

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Lillington said he was supposed to deploy to Latvia near the end of his military career. “But I hit the wall after I lost a young man from back home to suicide. So, it was kind of like the final straw for me.”

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His PTSD “is very cumulative, like many veterans. It wasn’t one instant, one IED, one firefight. It was the fact that we did it every day, that we get rocketed every day, or we had the threat of being rocketed every day, or ambushed. I’m definitely on my ninth life, when it comes to how many things I missed. Bombs blew up behind me; bombs blew up in front of me. I was shot down in a (Chinook) helicopter on Aug. 5, 2010 — all 22 of us walked away.”

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Despite his reservations about the monument, Lillington said he’ll probably visit once it’s built.

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“But I won’t be the first person there, because I personally try to commemorate my service to Afghanistan in small increments daily so that anniversaries aren’t overwhelming for me,” he said.

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“And I have many anniversaries of people I’ve lost, of battles, of incidents, and every Afghan veteran does.”

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Lillington suspects he’ll be disappointed by the final results. “I’ll probably chalk it up to bureaucracy and the lack of will within the Canadian military, public and government to recognize something that a good chunk of Canadians will live with forever.”

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Canadian troops “were like a duck out of water there,” he said of Kandahar’s Panjwai District.

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“It was not just the environment and the topography that was so different than Canada,” Lillington said.

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“It was counter-insurgency, right? There was no forward line of troops. It was anywhere, everywhere, in and around you, 10 kilometres from you, right beside you. We didn’t know who the enemy were, right? They’d pick up a hoe one day and they’d drop it, pick up an (AK-47) the next.”

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Within a month of deployment, Lillington recalls, Trooper Larry Rudd, his driver, was killed by a roadside bomb on May 24, 2010.

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“Larry was the centre of my squadron for morale. And so we started our mission less than two weeks in combat, losing one of the most precious, like the guy who’s the most revered as a young, you know, outgoing, funny, entertaining, engaging, charismatic guy. That set the tone for our remaining seven months of combat,” he said.

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Lillington still visits Rudd’s burial site at Mount Hope Cemetery, in Brantford, Ont. “And I go, when I can, with his mother, Helen, who was a single mother who raised him, and it was her only child that she lost in combat. And that connection, you’re not going to get that through that national war memorial.”

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