Roméo Dallaire

Dallaire and Michaud visit Ukraine to push mental health resources for military families

Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

It was a first-time visit to Ukraine for both retired lieutenant-general and senator Roméo Dallaire and his wife Marie-Claude Michaud, former head of the Valcartier Military Family Resource Centre.

The two-week tour across the country a month ago left them with concerns about the resources available for the mental health of military personnel and their families, but also ideas for a plan to address the situation.

In an interview with the QCT from the home she and Dallaire share in Saint-Roch- des-Aulnaies, about 90 minutes east of Quebec City, Michaud described the resources available for military families in Ukraine as “chaos.

“The needs are so urgent and the resources are not ready yet [because] they’re always in an emergency. So they offer counselling services for injured veterans, the ones that are deeply injured physically and their families,” Michaud said.

“But for the rest of the veterans and their families, there’s a lack of resources. They are trying things, but there’s no coordination between the resources. A lot of NGOs are in the field, trying to offer services and activities, but they compete with one another for resources.”

Michaud and Dallaire toured Ukraine at the request of the Global Initiative on Psychiatry and Toronto-based Fairfax Financial, an insurance company with operations in Ukraine.

Dallaire has turned his horrific experience as commander of the U.N. peacekeeping mission during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda into a personal crusade for causes ranging from better treatment for veterans living with trauma to a movement to rid the world of child soldiers. He has written several books inspired by his experience, including the most recent, titled The Peace.

Michaud’s experience dealing with military families at the Valcartier Family Centre, including stints in Afghanistan, led her to develop a different approach to leadership that she described in a 2021 book titled Leadership Without Armour: The Power of Vulnerability in Management.

Michaud said, “I spent 25 years supporting military families in Canada and I have to tell you that what they are going through there, all these spouses and children, it’s quite the same.”

One encounter Michaud found particularly moving was with a psychiatrist working at the Veteran Mental Health Centre of Excellence at Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv, whose husband was on the front lines with the army.

“She hugged me and she told me this is the first time that I have someone who understands what I’m going through,” Michaud said.

At a meeting of Fairfax employees and families involved in the war, Michaud said, “When I talked to them, a lot of them started to cry because I was explaining to them what it was like to be a military spouse when you have a loved one fighting and being away from home.”

During the visit, travelling 1,800 kilometres by train and 2,000 by road, they visited the front lines, saw a mass grave and witnessed firsthand the destruction the Russian invasion has wrought.

“One of the cities, Borova, was bombarded just an hour before we arrived there and we had to leave quickly because the Russians were very, very close.” The city was evacuated the next day.

Armed with what they learned from the Ukraine visit, where they met with a variety of people, including government leaders, the Canadian ambassador and the staff and patients at a rehabilitation centre, Michaud and Dallaire will prepare a plan to present to a meeting in Toronto next week.

The pair hopes to have Fairfax employees in Ukraine affected by the war serve as participants in a pilot project on dealing with mental health issues for wider implementation.

She said they will be talking with Canadian government officials about bringing help for Ukrainians to deal with the mental health impact of war.

“Roméo and I think Canada can certainly make a difference with this country, because 35 years ago, there were no services in Canada for military families and the members and it’s quite the same for the vet- erans. Roméo was the one who opened the door.”

Michaud said the visit was a particularly moving one for Dallaire, harkening back to when he was a young soldier in the Canadian army, posted in Germany.

“It was kind of emotional when we crossed the border, just realizing that [it was] so many years after him being in Germany and being there because of the Cold War and watching over the Russians,” she said.

She said they also had to be “very cautious” while in Ukraine because Dallaire is on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s list of Canadians barred from entering the country.

As for how and when the war, now past 1,000 days of fierce fighting, might end, Michaud said, “Well, it’s going to end someday, but the damage is so deep it’s going to take generations and generations to get over this.”