There were a lot of decorations on display the other morning in Ottawa. Some of those attending an annual breakfast I attended across the street at Parliament Hill on Monday, June 9, had more ribbons and military medals than I’d ever seen before.
But when the keynote speaker stepped to the lectern to address this largely military audience, he wore a plain business suit without a single decoration. Recently retired, Chris Sutherland could have worn his ceremonial navy uniform, displaying his rank as Rear Admiral and deputy commander of the entire Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). Instead, he just spoke.
“Good morning,” he said. “I’m a recovering addict, and I’ve struggled with mental illness, specifically depression.”
We could all read from the programs at the event – the 12th Annual Sam Sharpe Breakfast recognizing mental injuries from military service – that Sutherland had enjoyed a stellar RCN career. Trained at Kingston’s Royal Military College, deployed at sea aboard warships in NATO operations around the globe, and with years of service at National Defence Headquarters, the Directorate of Maritime Policy, and as base commander of CFB Halifax, Sutherland had given Canada 38 years of exemplary service.
At the beginning of his navy life (the 1980s), he told us this week, he didn’t use alcohol. He admitted that he often felt insecure and lacked confidence, until “I took my first drink, and all that disappeared. I felt this warm glow. I felt confident. And I chased that feeling for over 20 years.”
Sutherland noted that at its peak his addiction meant he might consume a full 26-ounce bottle of gin in a sitting. But his periodic bouts of depression and the liquor proved to be a deadly combination. “After 74 days at sea (in post-9/11 operations in the Middle East), I tried suicide.”
Statistics compiled by the Canadian government show that between the years 2012 and 2021, 207 Canadian Armed Forces servicemen (average aged 34) took their own lives; during the same period 18 servicewomen killed themselves.
Nobody has assembled the suicide statistics associated with Sam Sharpe’s era. First elected to the House of Commons in 1908 and then responding to the Empire’s call for troops in the Great War, Sharpe, at age 35, petitioned Ottawa to mobilize a local battalion.
He underwrote, equipped and trained his 116th Ontario Battalion for overseas service and led them through the battles of Vimy Ridge, Avion and Passchendaele. By the end of 1917, however, the war has reduced his original unit of 2,000 young recruits to fewer than 200.
“I wish to say I have no regrets,” he wrote home to his wife Mabel Sharpe. “I have done my duty as I saw it and have fought in the defence of those principles upon which our great Empire is founded.” He concluded this last letter writing, “If it should be my fate to be among those who fall … I die without any fears as to the ultimate destiny of all that is immortal within me.”
By Christmas that year, L/Col Sharpe had been admitted to hospital in England suffering from what doctors called “shell shock.” Then, following his transatlantic repatriation to Canada, he was admitted to Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital in late May 1918, where he took his own life.
Uxbridge, his hometown, mourned his loss. But his mental illness meant that his name was omitted from the Book of Remembrance in Ottawa. And his family experienced the stigma of shame and omission until May 2018, a century after his death, when the House of Commons unanimously recognized PTSD as a legitimate battle wound and entered Sam Sharpe’s name in the Book of Remembrance. Chris Sutherland cites how drastically attitudes of the Canadian military have changed over the stress of front-line service.
“When I reached out for help for my addiction, my depression, the first response of my supervisors, my colleagues, my friends was not ‘You’re morally weak’ or ‘Suck it up.’ It was, ‘Hey, what can we do to help?’”
He applauds friends who were non-judgmental and 55 days at a treatment centre “that saved my life.” He credits experts who gave him the tools to combat any recurring depression and to choose a quality lifestyle, improved physical fitness and a healthier attitude.
As I said, those attending Monday’s Sam Sharpe Breakfast displayed plenty of medals. But so far, surviving mental illness while in the service of one’s country isn’t one of them.
Chris Sutherland’s commentary will have to do: “I think one of the most courageous acts anyone struggling with mental illness can do, is to reach out for help.”