The first thing you see when you enter the grounds at a horse farm on Victor Street in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines near Mirabel, north of Montreal, is a wreath with poppies attached.
It suggests that this is no ordinary place, at least not for former Canadian artilleryman, Samuel Embregts.
“I was deployed in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007,” he told Global News sitting in front of the stables.
That tour left him emotionally scarred years after he returned, he explained, since he was diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder before moving back to Montreal.
“I was just a couple weeks away from being homeless,” he recalled. “I was suicidal.”
To help recover, he came to the farm for horse therapy.
The property is owned by Le Sentier, a Montreal-based non-profit organization that helps military and non-military veterans. Many of those veterans have gone to the farm for horse therapy — spending time with the animals and learning how to take care of them.
Le Sentier partners with Équi-Sens, a therapeutic equestrian centre that runs the program.
“We also give retreats,” explained Chantal Soucy, the veterans’ program and service director.
“So they come here, they spend like three days here and we work with them to give them some tools.”
Tools like socialization and other skills to help the vets function and reintegrate into civilian life.
Le Sentier is run by retired Lieutenant Colonel Bruno Plourde, a retired infantry officer who also served in Afghanistan.
“We provide, as a one-stop shop, a whole bunch of services and programs to help the veteran to have a successful transition to civilian life,” he said.
The organization was launched in 2018 and the farm is one of three locations, with the main office on Monkland Boulevard in Montreal and a third centre near Quebec City.
Services range from helping homeless vets to assisting others navigate the bureaucracy that Plourde says too often is an obstacle to veterans and families.
According to Plourde, the aim is to fill gaps in assistance to veterans.
“We have professionals here, social workers and psychosocial intervention specialists,” he said from the Monkland Avenue drop-in centre.
The organization partners with other groups to provide the help veterans need.
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One such group is Maison du Père, which provides assistance to people experiencing homelessness and have a special program for veterans.
Embregts, who now leads peer support groups at the farm, says the work helps him re-engage.
“If I don’t feel good and I’m depressed and I want to isolate, I have to come in this environment for two, three hours a week, and I have to socialize, I have to get out of my depression,” he said.
At the group’s Monkland Avenue location, Ryan Carey, another former infantry officer who also served in Afghanistan, leads peer support groups with music.
Part of his recovery included music therapy via Le Sentier.
“I believe a lot of veterans are stuck in grief,” he noted, saying that there are a lot of old wounds that they haven’t grieved through properly. “Music really helped me through that process, for sure.”
Plourde believes the first step in helping vets re-integrate is to help them heal.
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