Canadian veterans and military families are expressing anger and disappointment over recent disparaging remarks about Canada's military by US officials, including Vice-President JD Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. They say the comments betray the sacrifices made by Canadian troops who fought alongside American forces in Afghanistan.
Veterans React to Disrespectful Comments
Perry Chalmers, a former corporal in the Royal Canadian Regiment, served a nine-month tour in Afghanistan, working as a counter-IED engineer alongside the US army's 10th Mountain Division. He recalls the immediate response to the 11 September 2001 attacks, when his battalion was put on notice and dispatched to assist with forced landings of commercial aircraft after North American airspace was shut down.
Chalmers says he never regretted his role in the US-led war. "My experience was that we were participating in an operation to help our brothers and sisters in the United States," he says. "None of them ever snubbed their noses at us. We were treated as equals, and respected, for what we brought to the table."
But now, he says, "It's disrespect and betrayal. It makes me very angry."
Sacrifices Remembered
More than 40,000 members of the Canadian armed forces served in Afghanistan, supporting US and Nato operations. Canada lost 158 lives in the conflict. In 2007, a stretch of Ontario's highway 401 was renamed the "Highway of Heroes" to commemorate the convoys of fallen soldiers ferried between the military base in Trenton and the coroner's office in Toronto.
Chris Banks, a retired Canadian army sergeant who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, says he was proud to serve but now feels bitter. "I lost a part of myself," he says. "In that war we fought, for them."
Banks recalls taking cover in a ditch near Pashmul alongside an American platoon. He says he struggled with PTSD after returning home, but now advocates for the mental health of other Canadian veterans.
Mothers of Fallen Soldiers Speak Out
Nancy Payne, whose son Cpl Randy Payne was killed by a roadside bomb outside Kandahar airbase on 22 April 2006, says the US attacks on the Canadian military are "not right." She says, "We were neighbours for so long. That's all changed, now."
Jane McKay, mother of deceased Master Cpl Tim Wilson, wrote an op-ed for the Toronto Sun taking aim at the Trump administration. "Trump has no respect for any soldier – American, or Canadian, or those from the Nato alliance," she wrote. "He owes them all an apology."
Some US politicians have tried to make amends. On 1 September, Arizona Democrat senator Rueben Gallego travelled to Ottawa on an official congressional trip, and singled out Hegseth's anti-Canadian military tweets as "deeply disrespectful to the men and women of Canada that have died fighting with us."
A Changed Relationship
For veterans like Chalmers, such gestures may be too little, too late. He used to play tabletop strategy games with civilian friends in the US, but that ended when they laughed off his concerns about Trump's talk of Canada becoming the "51st state." Banks used to take his family across the border for vacations and shopping trips. Now, he says, "It's hard to have that same level of empathy."
Asked if he would eagerly enlist to help the US again, Banks says, "What would happen if there was another hypothetical 9/11? I hate to say it, but why would any nation, ever again, partner with the United States, if this is how they treat their closest neighbour and ally?"
