Milton, Ontario
Corporal (Retired) Frederick Smith is a Veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces with 1st Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment. Following a traumatic posting to the Golan Heights, where Canadian troops monitored a ceasefire between Israel and Syria under the UN banner, Cpl (Retd) Smith left the Army in 1981. His downslide into difficulty started at that moment as relied on exterior stimuli to cope with everyday life and fear, problems linked to what would later be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder. After years of homelessness and having struggled through the suicide of his son, Cpl (Retd) Smith admitted himself into a hospital to receive care. Since 2007, with more stability in his life, Cpl (Retd) Smith set out to help Veterans find assistance with their own struggles and founded an organization called Veterans Helping Veterans. The concept is simple: Cpl (Retd) Smith walks the streets in search of homeless Veterans and offers to help them. Having personal experience in many of the difficult situations the Veterans find themselves in, he is able to listen, identify with them, and offer a helping hand. He introduces Veterans to assistance programs in order to find shelter, counselling, or addiction resources and helps form links between the Veterans and Veterans Affairs Canada and The Royal Canadian Legion. Cpl (Retd) Smith has willingly invested a significant amount of his own personal income into helping Veterans. In 2015, the first annual Veterans Helping Veterans’ golf tournament raised $24,000 and collected donations of 900 pairs of new underwear and large amounts of personal hygiene items, things that most people take for granted but that some people do not have access to. The primary goal of Veterans Helping Veterans is to get Veterans the help they deserve. Cpl (Retd) Smith has helped countless Veterans, serving members and their families including a fair number of Veterans that have come off the streets and have established some sort of normalcy in their lives.