Christmas not Quite the Same

We spent Christmas over there. It's not the same Christmas that we have home. There's no Christmas tree as such, no Santa Claus, no nothing. It was sad. It was hard, extremely hard. We missed the family a lot, and I missed my two daughters and my grandson then, and my wife. I wanted to be with them. But you're there to do a job and you've got to do it. It was, yeah, it was hard, and to make it harder, Christmas night one of the soldiers that we had with us committed suicide, and that really affected us. Just outside my window where I used to sleep.

Mr. Desmeules describes his time in Rwanda during Christmas and the sadness encountered amongst the soldiers.

Mike Desmeules

Mr. Desmeules was born in 1950 in Jean Pierre, Quebec. With little work in his hometown community, Mr. Desmeules decided to join the armed forces, considering it as an opportunity to travel. At 18 years of age Mr. Desmeules initially joined the Navy taking up the service occupation of administrative clerk. With this occupation being very generic to all branches of service, Mr. Desmeules later joined with the army and in 1975 accepted an opportunity to travel to Egypt with the Signal Regiment. In 1995, Mr. Desmeules accepted a posting to Rwanda, again in the administrative field of occupation. Upon return to Canada, Mr. Desmeules made the switch back to navy service and retired when 30 years of service was achieved. Mr. Desmeules and his family took up residence in Prince Edward Island, Canada.