Testimonial from Lisa Cameron

Afghanistan, 2002: Friendly fire and a nation in mourning

It was May 2002, a month following the friendly-fire incident that resulted in the deaths of four Canadian troops from the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Battle Group at Tarnak Farm, Afghanistan. Lisa Cameron flew to Kandahar to set up for a Canadian Forces Show Tour on a flatbed truck “in the middle of the desert”.

“It was a difficult time, the first Canadian rotation supporting the U.S. mission, Operation Enduring Freedom,” says Lisa. “People were in mourning. There were a lot of unknowns. Everyone was living in tents. We, the entertainers, slept in the bombed-out Kandahar Airport terminals. The engineers were kind enough to put some cots in there for us and makeshift plywood walls.”

The troops, along with the entire nation, were reeling from Canada’s first soldier deaths in a combat zone in almost 50 years, grieving something unknown to the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) since the Korean War mission ended in 1953. 

At the time, no one knew Afghanistan would become Canada’s longest war (2001-2014), and eventually sacrifice the lives of 158 Canadian soldiers, seven civilians, injure thousands, and contribute to the growing recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the essentiality of wellness support for the CAF, military families and Veterans.

“Our goal with the Show Tour was to bring a piece of home and maybe offer a bit of a mental break for those serving in what was a very austere environment,” says Lisa. “Music allowed us to speak a universal language to interact, offer comfort and bring that support.”

A musician with purpose – from Nashville to CFMWS

Lisa was nine when she first laid her hands on a guitar. Within three years, Lisa Cameron & Company was born. Although legally underage to be in the venues, her band spent summers and holidays doing the festival, fairs and bar circuits in Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec. At 16, Lisa headed to Nashville to record her first of five country albums. A stint at business college in Kingston, Ontario, and a return to Nashville to work in production with Reba McEntire at Starstruck Entertainment a few years later put her music career on a strong trajectory. 

As a young adult, starting in 1998, she also traveled to deployed environments more than a dozen times through the CFMWS Show Tours program -- on Canadian naval ships, to Bosnia, and after 2002, several more times to Kandahar.

“Afghanistan was a turning point for me, personally,” says Lisa. “I could see the difference we were making to the morale of the troops as a musical show and as an organization. My desire to contribute to the CAF to support these people specifically in deployed areas of the world overcame everything else in my life.”

Embedded with the troops in Afghanistan

With her acute business acumen and a sense of purpose, Lisa left Nashville behind first to work in environmental services and high tech, but eventually to follow her passion. On May 1, 2007, she joined CFMWS permanently, as a Deployment Support Manager.

It was the perfect culmination of her skills as an artist, producer and businesswoman, paired with her innate desire to grow Deployment Support operations in Kabul, Kandahar and Dubai, to support the CAF in what had become a large and complex NATO mission in the Middle East. 

Under Lisa’s purview in that role was the Canadian Forces Radio and Television (CFRT), which at the time was essential to bringing news and sporting events, like the Stanley Cup Playoffs, to troops in theatre. She also oversaw the Show Tours, and the Amenities Program, which would send Canadiana, flags and parcels, hard copy Canadian newspapers, magazines and more to troops stationed across the world. 

The Deployed Ops team from HQ at the time worked tirelessly to establish the first Tim Horton’s on Kandahar Airfield first located on the boardwalk, with an adjacent outdoor ball hockey arena. 

“The HQ team deserves an immense amount of recognition for their pivotal role in our mission in Afghanistan,” says Lisa. 

”Their hard work in preparing civilians for deployment was essential, especially in such challenging conditions. During my time, I was honoured to assist them on-site and support other ongoing missions and Canadian Embassies. Their dedication and that of our deployed staff made a real difference in the well-being and success of all deployed personnel.”

CFMWS was also running retail outlets on “Area 26”, where the Canadian compound was eventually relocated at Kandahar airfield, with 60 to 65 deployed civilians serving NATO troops at any given time. There were Canadian civilian deployments at a retail outlet at Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar City, named for a Canadian soldier from Nova Scotia who died in Afghanistan in 2002, and at Camp Mirage, a logistics centre in Dubai.

“The mission in Afghanistan was really growing,” says Lisa. “A lot of it was pre-internet as we know it today. We found people were very ritualistic and needed a little bit of home to get them through. That’s what we provided.”

« There’s something about playing ball hockey, watching the Grey Cup, or sitting on the boardwalk at Kandahar airfield with a physical, albeit weeks’-old Canadian newspaper, having a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee. It made you sort of forget where you were for five or ten minutes, or a couple of hours and that was really important for the morale of our troops. » 

The team also provided fitness, sport and recreation activities, and excursion programming at Camp Mirage to get people off base, because it was “quite a small footprint”.

She personally spent much of her time while in Afghanistan “outside the wire” at forward operating bases, aiding with the setup of support programming and installation of equipment. Deployed staff routinely ventured beyond the gates of the main camp to carry out their duties as barbers and retail attendants. Barbers would be dispatched to cut hair for forces that couldn’t make it back to the main camp.

“Those were dangerous conditions,” Lisa says.

« In Afghanistan, anytime you were doing a road move or overland travel, there were a lot of concerns, and rightly so, over improvised explosive devices being planted. I was at Kandahar airfield when the children’s school just outside the gates constructed by Canadians was attacked by a suicide bomber. » 

More than 40,000 Canadian troops served in Afghanistan over 13 years. Canada’s combat role ended in 2011, but the last troops remained as part of the country’s reconstruction efforts until March 12, 2014.

New horizons: CFMWS in Latvia

Shortly after the end of Canada’s mission to Afghanistan, the CAF was tasked with standing up a NATO base in Adazi, Latvia, 30 kilometres northeast of Riga, and a little more than 240 kilometres from the border with Russia.

Lisa, who was promoted to Associate Director of Deployment Support in 2015, was tasked not only with advising on the facilities set-up – including the vast fitness space, retail operations and recreation and excursion programming – but also with continually and incrementally enhancing the selection and training process for Canadian civilian employees who would deploy to Latvia, as part of CFMWS, to support the deterrence mission. She had recently become a military spouse, been posted to Halifax, and was also starting her family, “late in life,” admits the mother of two.

Despite her busy home life, Lisa continues to travel to Latvia several times per year, to connect with our deployed CFMWS civilian employees, the troops, and to make important organizational connections and improvements. She also personally oversees the training and selection sessions in Halifax following each round of civilian recruitment for Deployment Support, which happens twice annually.