A Challenge and an Opportunity

Interviewer: So I understand that you became part of the Royal 22nd Regiment at that time under Operation Athena, Roto 1, tell us what that is. Yes so when I went to that regiment in Kingston, CFJSR, Canadian Forces Joint Signal Regiment, and they prep military transportables so it’s a communication unit that deploys with different regiments and we went with the Vandoos which was quite different for me I don’t speak French and I know of our team I think there was 12 or 13 of us and there’s probably only 2 of us that spoke French so it was quite a different atmosphere. It was a different going into Afghanistan but then you’re in a Canadian contingent where a lot of us don’t speak any French and it was all French outside of our group. So it was quite a different, I guess, social dynamic there because there is that rivalry I guess between the French and English always, it pops up. There’s always rivalry in the military between any group so any type of delineation can set that off. So it was a bit of a challenge there too to work with that but it was quite good too because I’d run into people that spoke very little English but we’d work our way through it right. I was fortunate in the camp that I was in, like we lived a tent but it was fairly nice, it was a big dome tent and our side was the Canadian side but then you’d go probably not even two hundred metres and it was the multi-national side where it was Germans, Swiss, everybody under the sun that you could think of. So we would go over there and they would have like their little social areas. There’s a pizza shop set up by the Croats I think but… and it was a challenge to communicate right but everybody was pretty interested in doing it. The Germans were very welcoming I found. It was pretty neat to meet the other countries and see what they had to offer. I know I rode security one day to the airport in Kabul and we went to the French mess and just to see that where they eat, oh they have some wine and they have bread, you know, the different flavours of every culture kind of work their way into those aspects too.

Being part of the Royal 22nd Regiment, Mr. Lord expressed the challenges faced as part of this unit along with the positive aspects of belonging.

Justin Lord

Mr. Justin Lord was born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island July 10, 1980. As a teenager he and his family moved to the town of Souris. Before attending university, Mr. Lord made the decision to join the Reserves. With encouragement from his cousin, he joined the 721 Communications regiment as a reservist and worked weekends while attending school. Mr. Lord completed basic training in Kingston, Ontario and experienced varied opportunities with the military. At age 23, he was given the opportunity to join the Royal 22nd Regiment Operation Athena Roto 1 with the regular force deploying to Afghanistan for a six month term in the Communication field holding rank of corporal. Returning home, Mr. Lord continued on as a reservist but his career path took a turn and in 2007 he sought employment with the Federal Government and now resides in Prince Edward Island with his family.