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The Similkameen
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Volume 65 Issue 45
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Afghanistan vet will lead Princeton parade Interacting with citizens of Afghanistan was eye-opening, she said. “As a female I have the freedom to do anything I want as a Canadian. It really impressed me how much Canadians are lucky but they don’t realize how lucky they are, how many things you just take for granted.” Even basic human rights like “clean water and education” have a different meaning in the Middle East, she said. As well, operating in her professional role in a country where women have limited freedoms was often frustrating. “You never really see women out on the streets and if you do they are not alone. It’s a very male dominated place and women are thought of as chattel.” As a supply technician Hunter often had to deal with local contractors and suppliers, and found little co-operation from the men in charge. “They looked at me like dirt,” she said. Even though she was not patrolling with the infantry Hunter said simply occupying an area in Afghanistan was nerve wracking at times. “There were incidents that happened, obviously unplanned.” In a public setting, the simple act of a man pulling out his cellphone while looking in her direction was frightening. “You question, you wonder, you look, and you just never know.” Hunter recalls one of the most poignant times as being the last Remembrance Day for Canadians in Kandahar. “It was bittersweet as we were closing out the base…For me Remembrance Day has always been a huge thing. I do what I do to make those that came before me proud, if that makes any sense, and I try to live up to the sacrifices they made.”
Andrea DeMeer Spotlight Staff
This November 11 represents an emotional Remembrance Day for Sergeant Tania Hunter. Hunter, a 19-year veteran with the Canadian army who has experienced three tours in Afghanistan, will travel to Princeton to join her family and lead the annual parade to the town’s cenotaph. Hunter, 38, is retiring from the forces this January for medical reasons. It will be her last Remembrance Day in uniform. “I’m honored that I get to do the parade in Princeton,” she told The Spotlight in a telephone interview from her Edmonton home. “It does mean a lot to me. I’m proud of all my time in the military and everything I got to experience and do and the people I’ve met and places I’ve gone. You can’t replace that. I look forward to actually spending my last parade in the military with Princeton and with my family. It will be very nice.” While Hunter grew up on the lower mainland, her mother Karen Norrington, her step-father, father and her brother and his family now all live in the Princeton area, and it was Norrington’s membership in the local Legion that led to the invitation to be the Remembrance Day parade marshal. While Hunter enlisted as an infantry soldier at the age of 18, she eventually transferred to an army unit as a supply technician. In that role she supported troops on the ground in Kosovo and during three tours of duty with United Nations forces in Afghanistan. “That was an interesting time to be sure,” she said, while noting that many of her postings were with special forces, and the amount of information she is allowed to share is limited. “Seeing it on the news and talking about it with people is one thing, but actually going over there and being in that environment and smelling the smells and hearing the sounds and everything around you, you really get a good feeling for what the environment is like…I was always glad to come home.”
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She expects this Remembrance Day will also be reflective. Tania Hunter was part of a Mission Close Out Unit in Afghanistan in June, 2011, and is shown here signing off on supplies to be shipped back to Canada.
“My brother and his wife are bringing their three boys and they’ve never seen me in uniform. This is my last one so yeah it’s going to be tough, but a good kind of tough if you know what I mean.”
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