The changing face of Canadian veterans

The Globe and Mail:

As Canadians mark another Remembrance Day, the boundaries of what we honour, and whom, have never been more blurred. The war that ended on the 11th day of the 11th month no longer has a single living Canadian veteran, since the death this year of John Henry Foster Babcock at age 109. The living links to later conflicts of the Second World War and Korea are also slipping away and, as they do, the face of Canadian veteran is rapidly changing – along with the question of what debt the nation owes them.

By 2015, there will be three veterans of modern conflicts like Afghanistan and Bosnia for every survivor of Korea and the global war of 1939-45. The growing ranks of younger former combatants have a different profile, and different priorities.

The new generation doesn’t want to steal the honour or the glory from older vets, said 30-year-old Marc D’Astous, who served in Afghanistan when he was 24.

“But we need programs and services and different things than the older generation of veterans,” he said. “We need jobs, we need rehab, we need all these things, we don’t need long-term facilities yet.”

Every month Canada loses 1,700 veterans of the Second World War and Korea while the number of Afghanistan veterans rises with every deployment. It’s a shift that could have profound implications for the way Veterans Affairs Canada does business.

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