Longtime military family member reflects on its toll
A mother and niece of serving and retired Canadian Forces members shares her experience
April Hudson
Northern News Services
Thursday, November 10, 2016
LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON
All her life, Arlie Brown has been surrounded by the Canadian military.
Arlie Brown holds up a poem she treasures, which describes the questions children ask about war. - April Hudson/NNSL photo
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Although she never enlisted, two of Brown's brothers, a nephew and her uncle have all been members of the Canadian Forces. Most recently, her son Steven enlisted in the infantry.
But Brown won't be found at Fort Simpson's Remembrance Day ceremony on Nov. 11, and hasn't been for years. As the bar manager for the Nahanni Inn, Brown usually spends her Remembrance Day at work, where she can remember in private, serving the Canadian Rangers who drop by and people who migrate to the inn after the public ceremony.
"I find it's too emotional," Brown said.
"It's private. I don't want people to see tears in my eyes."
Brown's uncle, Joseph, became a member of the Navy when her mother was a child. The family didn't see him for 45 years.
Eventually, while her mother was pregnant with her, the family received a telegraph from him saying he was alive and married.
Brown carries the name of his wife, Arlie.
"Twenty years ago, (my mom) went to California and met him for the first time. She went her whole life without meeting him," Brown said.
The difficulty of living with a family member in the forces is hard to explain for Brown. She recalls when her brother Randy was sent overseas during the Gulf War, and the family didn't know where he was or if he was alive for six months.
Not too long after his retirement, Randy died from cancer in 2010.
"I had a lot of people in the military," Brown said. "It's stressful. But people don't really understand that until your kid is in it."
Brown still remembers the day her son left for the military: Sept. 6, 2009, on his brother's birthday and just a week after he'd received his acceptance letter.
It was just shortly after her mother had died.
"Every time (my mom) would see a cop pull around, she'd freak out - oh, something happened to the boys. She said, 'As long as my eyes are open, nobody else in this family is going in the military,'" Brown recalls.
"The day my mom died, we buried her and he came back and joined up."
But the boy she had raised - the one who wouldn't even play with toy guns as a child - was following his dream, and she knew she had to support him.
"He said to me, 'Mom, I always wanted to but I didn't have the heart to do it while Nan was alive,'" she said.
Despite her own fears, Brown accompanied him to Yellowknife to sign up.
"That was the hardest thing," she said.
"I said, 'I know I'm going to regret it.' And he said, 'No you won't, mom - I'll make you proud.' "
Although Brown won't be at the Fort Simpson Remembrance Day parade on Nov. 11, she has her own traditions of remembrance. Every year, she send her son a poem titled "The Inquisitive Mind of a Child," which asks the questions children wonder about what the poppy symbolizes.
"Everybody's always talking about Remembrance Day, but nobody talks about the poppies and the things kids go through," she said.
"When you've got kids in it, you understand better. Kids always ask these questions before they (are old enough to) join."
