No Country for Young Men

This past Tuesday evening, I was fortunate enough to attend a screening of the documentary "No Country for Young Men" at the Royal Canadian Military Institute. The film was produced by the Breakout Educational Network, and it deals with an almost forgotten piece of Canadiana: the programs of the Canadian Officers Training Corps:

Documentary producer Rob Roy got the initial concept for his latest project at a lecture by retired Colonel Brian MacDonald at the Canadian Forces Staff College in Toronto. The subject – how the media relates to the armed forces – took an unexpected turn when discussion moved on to why the public was disconnected from their military? The lecturer asked if it was due to the scandal over the death of a Somali prisoner by Canadian forces personnel? No, he answered. Was it the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet empire, effectively ending forty years of Cold War? No again.

Instead the former officer pointed to 2 decisions taken in the heady, hippie days of peace and unrest, love and Vietnam, in 1968. The unification of Canada's Armed Forces prompted a drastic reduction of reserve regiments and secondly, the Canadian Officer Training Corps was cancelled from Canadian universities. The loss of COTC had the greatest effect on the creation of a cultural disconnect because it cut off an entire generation Canadian leaders from knowledge and experience of their military.

So for the curious minded documentarian, the question became – what was the COTC? And what could replace it?

Answering that question would take Rob through 3 countries to date with a 4th on the horizon. He found – “...that the COTC has a long and storied history in Canada, it highlighted a period when an educated citizen was expected to be mindful of a responsibility and sense of duty to contribute service to their country, a tradition which has since gone away.”

This idea of having more ordinary Canadians connected in a concrete and personal way with our military is one that I've championed for a long time:

There was a time in Canada when everyone knew someone who had served in uniform. There was a time when service with the militia was valued on a resume, and not worrisome for a potential employer.

We need to get the connection back between citizen and soldier. Only then will the defence of our nation have pan-partisan, base-level support. Only then will we be able to forestall another Decade of Darkness when the political pendulum swings back the other way.

Films like "No Country for Young Men," initiatives like the COTC, like The 7 Year Project are far more effective expressions of that sentiment than any blog post of mine. I applaud Rob Roy and his colleagues for their efforts.