The day I first saw it, I had no idea how much impact it would have on my life or the lives of several others.
I came across the photograph back in March. I had opened a copy of the Globe and Mail and spotted the image right away. I suddenly realized the picture might provide the exact image I’d been searching for. It showed a contemporary Canadian soldier in Afghanistan. He seemed to be seated inside a troop transport. He looked exhausted, done in. I checked the caption under the shot. It said:
“Master Corporal Chris Jebeaupre rests after a mission in the Taliban stronghold of Zhari district.”
All last winter I had searched for an image to place on the cover of my new book, a book I hoped might change attitudes about the way we view Canadian veterans. I wanted the image to say several things. It had to depict a veteran; clearly this man was a veteran, not of long past wars, but of a current war. It had to be an honest reflection of the aftermath of a wartime event; the Reuters news agency photographer, Stefano Rellandini, seemed to have caught this Canadian soldier in a state of exhaustion. Perhaps even loss. So I called Reuters seeking permission to use the shot on the cover of my book.
“You’ll have to call New York,” the woman at the Toronto Reuters office told me.
Once I’d made contact, I asked Reuters to forward the photo to my publisher’s cover designer to incorporate the image around the title of my new book, “Breaking the Silence.” From the first draft of his treatment, I knew that my instincts to get this photograph were right. The image of Master Cpl. JeBeaupre seemed perfect.
Early this fall, the production of my book and its dust jacket came off the printing presses and by October I held the first copy in my hands. Suddenly it hit me. We had paid for clearance to use the photograph. The production designer had incorporated it perfectly into the jacket. But we had never bothered to contact the Canadian veteran whose face would appear on thousands of books.
“I don’t want this guy to hear about being on the cover of a nationally published book by accident,” I told my publisher. “I want him to hear it from us.”
Thus began my search for the veteran on my book jacket. I tried to find him through the Canadian Forces database. I called friends of mine in the military. I went as far up the Department of National Defence ladder as a civilian can go to find him. Nothing.
“Is it possible his name is not Jebeaupre, but deBeaupre?” I asked a military officer.
That was it exactly. And the Canadian Forces system immediately traced the soldier. By coincidence, he had just returned from his overseas deployment in Afghanistan and been posted to CFB Gagetown, N.B. It took a while, but eventually I convinced a duty officer there to receive a copy of the book and pass it along to deBeaupre himself. In about a week, I received word the soldier had received it. He contacted me by voice-mail and said he was honoured to be part of a book that recognized Canadian veterans.
By mid-October, I was on the road, on television and radio and online talking about the content of the book. In just over five weeks I have been interviewed or delivered talks, presentations and keynotes 85 times. Then, last Wednesday evening, as I was about to speak one more time, a woman in the audience caught my attention. I introduced myself. And so did she.
“I’m Sandy deBeaupre,” she said, “Chris deBeaupre’s mother.”
I don’t know whether it was out of respect or surprise, but I directed a lot of my presentation to her that evening. I spoke about one of my book’s themes – the code of silence that veterans use on sons and daughters who ask “What did you do in the war, Dad?” I suggested that sometimes it is we who impose the silence on veterans out of reverence for their loss on Remembrance Days. And I explained that sometimes veterans don’t have to be elderly to have suffered trauma, pain and loss; I described my conversations with Canadian veterans back from Afghanistan. And I acknowledged that Sandy deBeaupre’s son Chris – depicted on my book jacket – might well be one of those silently suffering veterans. Sandy nodded in understanding.
“You may not realize it,” she said, “but that photograph on your book was taken just after Chris had lost four of his comrades that very day.”
The face I had tripped over, chosen for my cover and hoped would represent the face of the veteran experience, had indeed lost a lot that day.
