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.
In partnership with the University of Alberta’s Community University Partnership (CUP) town council will be looking at different ways that Drayton Valley residents can work to generate local wealth for the community.
Geraldine Cahill, the director of UpSocial Canada who works with CUP, along with Dr. Maria Mayan from the U of A, spoke to council about initiatives that other municipalities have taken on to help stimulate local economies.
CUP has been working in Drayton Valley since 2020, when they helped the Town develop the Zero Fee Tuition Program, now called the Tuition Assistance Bursary. The partnership was developed for a research project to explore whether the ZFT program could be a mechanism for an inclusive economy.
“The results so far have been very positive, both on employment and also for quality of life for participants,” said Cahill.
Cahill told council they had engaged with stakeholders during the research and found a strategy that they would like to explore with the Town. They believe that Rural Wealth Creation could be an effective initiative to help Drayton Valley navigate increased costs in a way that can benefit the entire community.
“Across the country there has been a pattern of downloading costs and responsibilities to municipalities… without much change in capital transfers,” said Cahill. “That puts a great deal of strain on municipal governments and single-resource towns have been hard hit by this.”
With RWC, the Town would work together with residents to develop ways that residents can invest in community projects as part of their retirement, thus ensuring a larger chunk of local money stays in the municipality.
Over the past few years communities across the country have achieved economic stability by using programs such as co-operatives, local procurement, employee ownership and other succession models, community bonds, community land trusts and more. Cahill also provided examples from some of the municipalities that have gone in this direction.
In 2002, the municipality of Westlock learned that their grain terminals were going to be sold. As agriculture was one of the important sectors for the community, there was concern about how the sale could affect the local economy. So, instead of letting the grain terminals go, the community worked together to raise $1.2 million to purchase the grain terminal.
Those who invested in the terminal now get yearly dividends for their investment. They also have the most profitable terminal for its size in Canada and are planning on diversifying into a transport company.
Cahill says that the size of the municipality may play a role in which type of community program would work best.
Mayor Nancy Dodds asked Cahill how the Town could move forward with the plan as they would have to play a role in whatever path residents choose to move forward with.
“As the Town, as leaders, we want to be involved, but we don’t want to be getting in the way,” said Dodds. “How do you make sure that everyone has their say when you’re picking that.”
CUP has a workshop planned for May 5 at Clean Energy Technology Centre to help brainstorm some ideas that may work in the community. Cahill says everyone is welcome to attend and they will be looking at community assets as well as asking attendees what their priorities are.
Cahill says once they get some feedback from the meeting, she can use those priorities and ideas to generate profiles of which programs could best address them and how it would affect the community.
“Then we can shop them around for several months,” says Cahill. “I don’t want to rush the process so that people have a chance to weigh in.”
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.”
