Actually, I'm from Guelph, ironically enough. I'm not really sure how that happened. I didn't plan that.
Honestly, I'm going to sound like an echo here, but it is a convoluted process for reservists, speaking to my own experiences. There is an issue that you fall back into a sphere of anonymity after you have just came back from doing something pretty intensive, something that you have a tremendous amount of pride in, and then you're suddenly cut back into a society that is, generally speaking, ambivalent towards you and your accomplishments. Or you're just generally misunderstood because not only does no one really understand what you did, but the debate and discussion at all the various levels is radically different from what you experienced in your service overseas.
With regard to the new Veterans Charter ensuring that veterans from within the reserve do have a voice and their issues can be addressed.... For example, when I chatted about a friend who couldn't access mental health services, or even the fact that my medical charts were lost for almost eight months and it's because I was a reservist I was told, those sorts of things deserve more attention. The debate and discussion is rightly focused on members of the regular force, but when the focus is only on one aspect of serving members who went overseas.... Definitely there's a different set of challenges, and a unique set of challenges, for the reservists when they reintegrate into society. They're not going back to Petawawa with all their battle buddies. My battle buddies went back to London, Toronto, and elsewhere, while I went back to Ottawa. That's a challenge in and of itself. It's a reality that we had to face, and we got through it, of course, we're quite tenacious in our approach to ensure that we support each other, but it's not without challenge.