As we reflect on the importance of Remembrance Day and the role the Canadian military has played in conflicts past and present the Free Press reached out Drayton Valley’s Lane Starling on for his thoughts on his life as an active member of Canada’s Armed Forces.
Fredrickson: How long have you served with the Canadian Military?
Starling: I joined the Military in 2003. I was 17 years old and still in high school. I Joined the Reserves (Part time) as a Field Artilleryman with 20 Field Regiment in Edmonton. I found out later, after he passed, that it was the same Regiment my grandfather Chester Vig served in during the Second World War.
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Fredrickson: What tours have you done?
Starling: In 2006 I fought in Afghanistan on a 155mm Howitzer crew. It was a “busy” 6 month tour. I took part in dismounted patrols through the mountains looking for Taliban, was once ambushed outside Khandahar City, and fought at the First Battle of Panjwai. There was a second local Drayton Valley resident, a good friend of mine, Keith Alexandrovitch who was with the infantry there at the same time.
Then in 2017 I was in Latvia as part of the NATO Enhanced Forward Presence contingent. I was a Joint Terminal Attack Controller that time. Which is a fancy way of saying that I specialized in calling in airstrikes. That was a much calmer tour and it was great to see and work in that area of the world with all the different countries coming together to form one fighting unit.
Recently I made the switch from the Army over to the Air Force and became an officer. Now I work for NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense) at 22 Wing in North Bay, Ontario. Here I am an Air Battle Manager. Basically I’m Air Traffic Control for military operations. We “manage” air battles (dog fights), air-to-air refueling and conduct 9/11 type intercepts of suspicious and hijacked aircraft. We also track Santa.
Fredrickson: Why did you join the military?
Starling: As to why I joined? I can’t really say. It was more of a calling than anything else. From as early as I can remember I never really had a question as to doing something else. I’ve had other jobs, worked at the sawmill, and in the oilfield for a time however nothing really stuck. It wasn’t until I came back from Afghanistan that it solidified for me. I realized it was just what I was meant to do. In 2007 I went over to the Regular Force. Been here ever since.
Fredrickson: What does Remembrance Day mean to you?
Starling: When I was younger, Remembrance day wasn’t really a big deal. It wasn’t, truly. It seemed to me to be a faceless war, where someone would call off a list of names that I had absolutely no connection with. Coming from a small town in rural Alberta, I think we could count on one hand the number of living Vets we had in the community. My Grandfather never talked about the war, at least certainly not with me and I never knew any of the other vets. Everyone else would try to explain why it was important; however it all seemed very hollow and disconnected, far away and impersonal. Obviously that has changed. For me now Remembrance Day is very much a personal thing. For me it’s not about the wars and conflicts we have fought in, it’s about the people that I’ve met and have known along the way and their stories they have shared. The first house my wife and I purchased was from a Korean War vet, our neighbor served in Cyprus and Bosnia. I spent a month in South Korea with several Commonwealth War Vets and walked their old battlefield. Obviously my own stories and people I knew from the Afghan war have an impact, but most importantly it made everything relatable. All the stories, the history. For all the reasons people told me that Remembrance Day was important I now understood. Unfortunately I’m not sure that’s a meaning I can impart on anyone else. For me it was a very personal journey to get to my meaning of Remembrance Day. But if anyone ever wants to have a coffee and hear a story next time they see me around town, don’t hesitate to stop and ask me.
Members of local indigenous groups are working toward opening a charter school with the goal of offering students an education that goes beyond academics.
Charlene Bearhead, a member of the board for the Roots of Resilience not-for-profit society, says the group is applying to the Minister of Education to be able to open a charter school in Drayton Valley, with a goal of opening in September.
The society is hosting an information night on February 13 from 5-7:30 p.m. at the Holiday Inn Express.
Bearhead says her 40 years of working in education has made it clear that the system is failing children and staff as human beings.
“I’m always a big believer in doing the best you can to try to work with what exists already and do what you can to help guide that,” says Bearhead.
She worked within the system, and recently served as a school board trustee, but she says people weren’t ready to progress with changes she feels need to be made.
The goal of opening the charter school is to offer a learning experience that encompasses a child’s entire wellbeing, including mental and spiritual health, along with teaching Alberta’s curriculum. While the students will learn from methods that indigenous people have always used for passing on knowledge, Bearhead says the school isn’t just open to indigenous children. Any child in the area from Kindergarten to grade 12 will be welcome to attend.
One thing that Bearhead wants the public to be aware of regarding charter schools is that they are still public schools. Roots of Resilience will be funded in the same manner that Wild Rose School Division and the St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic School Division are.
“One lady said to me, ‘This sounds so amazing Charlene, but I really struggle with anything that takes away from public schools,’” says Bearhead. “I had to say to her ‘This is public education. This is public school.’”
She says there are only provisions for charter schools in Alberta. Charter schools receive the same funding for facilities, transportations, and other expenses, and the same requirements to follow the Alberta curriculum and the Education Act. Just like any other public school, parents do not have to pay extra to enrol their children in a charter school.
“But they are intended to be schools of choice,” says Bearhead. “They give parents and kids a choice in their education.”
However, charter schools are not without controversy. According to the website of Alberta Teachers’ Association, “there is only one pot of money for schools in Alberta. When money is diverted to private and charter schools, it leaves public schools in a funding shortfall.”
Bearhead says charter schools have to offer a unique approach to education that isn’t available in the geographic area. Bearhead says it’s important to the RoR society to define the holistic success for the school, which means the students will be doing better in body, mind, and soul, as well as academically.
She says that pushing people hard to do well academically while ignoring all other aspects of the student’s progress doesn’t work well. For Bearhead, it’s important for educators to meet the students where they’re at, value them as human beings, offer them a safe environment, and offer opportunities for the students to see themselves reflected in what is being taught.
Along with the regular curriculum, Bearhead says they plan to offer language programs for those who are interested in learning the language of their ancestors to help those students connect with their heritage.
Wendy Snow, the Interim District Captain in the Otipemisiwak Metis Government for District Eight and member of the RoR society, says she feels her own children would have benefitted from what the proposed school will be offering.
Snow says she has two children as well as a niece that she is the guardian of. With all three of them going to school in Drayton, she says they went to almost every school in the community.
“I found that it was very lacking as far as teaching to our culture,” says Snow.
She says every year she would fill out the demographic forms, indicating that her children were indigenous, knowing that the school division would get additional funding for those students.
“I found that all of the funding in the Wild Rose School Division went to Rocky Mountain House,” she says. “All the programming, all the culture stuff, everything went to Rocky Mountain House.”
Like Bearhead, Snow wanted to work with the system and try to help improve things. She ran twice for school board trustee, but did not get elected.
“I’ve always wanted to see more funding and programming and culture stuff in this area, just like there is in Rocky Mountain House,” says Snow.
Bearhead says the RoR school will resonate with indigenous children.
“An indigenous pedagogy, or approach to education, is about physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual [well-being]. Whatever that means to you. Everyone is indigenous to somewhere,” says Bearhead.
She says public charter schools are smaller and have unique approaches to education.
“They are actually intended to be models for how education could happen in any or all public schools,” she says.
Bearhead says when the students see themselves reflected in the content they’re learning, they have a better chance of relating to it and absorbing it.
By making the students the centre of the system, educators can focus on the whole child, not just the content they’re supposed to be learning. She says each student has different strengths, weaknesses, interests, and paths. In their school, they plan to help students excel at their strengths, offer support for their weaknesses, and encourage their interests and plans.
Another important part of education is offering the students a safe space.
“If kids are terrified, if kids are being bullied, if kids don’t feel safe, how can they focus on learning?” says Bearhead. “That’s just human instinct. That’s survival.”
She says if students are feeling ostracized, alienated, or left out, it’s more challenging for them to learn.
Roots of Resilience will also offer hands-on learning for students. This experiential learning will be land-based, which means there will be more of a balance between indoor and outdoor learning. She says there are many different areas of the curriculum that can be taught outdoors beyond science and physical education.
“For me, when you do something, rather than just read about it or hear about it, it becomes ingrained in you,” she says.
Snow says she wants to see children in the area have an opportunity to choose an education that best suits them.
“I think it just gives them a great basis for success later on in life,” says Snow.
Fredrickson: What challenges/opportunities have you faced during your career?
Starling: A lot of the challenges and the opportunities in my career were the same events. But not solely for me, and not the reasons you might think. My military career isn’t mine alone, it includes my family the entire time. Obviously Afghanistan was a challenge for me but it also left my wife alone as a single parent while I was gone. Our second son was born while I was in Panjwai and when I came home my oldest son (not yet two at the time) took a while to even remember who I was. One of the biggest challenges was the biggest opportunity. Moving away for the first time. It was hard. The Starling family is pretty rooted in Drayton Valley. It’s all my wife and I have ever known, and so to pack up and move to New Brunswick was a big challenge. Since then we have lived in four different provinces and each time my wife has had to restart her career or find a new job. My kids adjust to another new school and new friends. I’ve been gone a lot with work. In the last year, I’ve been gone nine months. My family has more or less become accustomed to me entering and exiting the family routine and picking up as we go. But on the same token, we have a really close knit family because of all that. When we move to someplace new, the first people we know are each other. My kids have lived on the east and west sides of Canada and everywhere in-between. They have seen and appreciated Canadian culture across the whole country. They have been introduced to different ideas and views that are important to different people across the country. We have lived in bilingual communities and my kids can now speak French because of it. Everyone has learned how to meet new people and friends. Whenever we have to move now, we see it as an opportunity instead of a challenge.
The funniest thing is though, no matter where we live in the country, whenever I hit the Thorsby bend on the way back to Drayton to visit, I get the weirdest nostalgic feeling of “I’m home.”
