Many young veterans who served in the Afghan war are still coming to terms with the experience.
“It’s always in the back of your mind, you try to ignore it, but coming here and working on panels and being around vets as well, it sort of helps you to cope,” said Dale Hamilton.
Fellow former soldier Stephen Clews, along with Hamilton, never imagined themselves as artists. But they spend nearly every day at a Vancouver gallery, working on a mural that will depict life and death in Afghanistan.
The artwork is the idea of Foster Eastman, a businessman who was overcome by the recent suicides of so many Canadian soldiers.
“It really inspired me to do something, and I thought ‘what can I do and how can I involve others to do something?’,” said Eastman.
The group of artists hope members of the public will sponsor the panels. Each one is dedicated to a Canadian who died in Afghanistan. There will be 162 names once the wall is finished and sometimes they’re names the soldiers know well.
“This was a friend who was in my platoon actually,” said Hamilton, working on a panel. Tyler Todd was only 26 years old when he died from the blast created by an improvised explosive device.
The money raised from the mural will go to the Veterans Transition Network, a program that helps members of the military re-adjust to life at home. That is a struggle Clewes knows well.
“I hated coming home,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave. All my friends were there and I felt like I was abandoning them.”
Clewes credits the transition program for helping him deal with his anger and says working on the mural has allowed him to talk about it.
The final piece of the mural will not be unveiled until April, but passersby have already left tributes to the men and women honoured on the wall.
Information about the Veterans Transition Network and the mural project.
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