Rumour Control
One word of advice: STICK TO THE TRUTH (well okay, that’s four words…). Rumours can hurt. Rely only on official word from the military command or from your parents. Even what you read in the newspapers might not be true. Take our advice and ignore rumours. Try to go to the source of the information. It may be difficult to completely ignore rumours or gossip, but it’s important to rely on official sources of information when a family member has been deployed. A good place to find reliable information is the MISSION INFORMATION LINE. Another is the Department of National Defence website.
Check out these stories about deployment rumours:
One thing to look out for is rumours. Kids make up false stories to excite themselves and other people, or simply to get attention. A friend once told me that military bases are so heavily fortified that, if you don’t have ID, they will shoot you on the spot. Of course that wasn’t true. That was when I was 8 and gullible. (Logan from Italy)
Apparently, when a man is away on deployment, his wife tends to shop around more and spend more money. (Caroline from Gatineau)
I heard rumours that some Canadian soldiers had gone to Pakistan to sort out the crisis and that they were all taken prisoner and shot. IT WAS A LIE! What actually happened was that some Canadians went to Pakistan and tried to help with the peace agreement. No more than that. (Bryan from England)
Someone told me that my dad was going to go to Haiti for 6 months and would have to go on training for one month. But in the end, it was just a plain fat rumour… so my dad didn’t have to go away after all! (Jamie from Alberta)
When I was young, my dad used to have to leave home a lot. He would tell me about the places he went to and stuff like that. When I was small though, I was a little eavesdropper and I would listen to my mom talking on the phone to my dad because I wanted to know what was really going on (please remember this is when I was like 7). Some of the things I heard made no sense to me back then though, so I would jump to conclusions or try to imagine what it might be like. My dad would also send us emails about what he was up to. My mom would read them to me. They included stories like: “Hi Zab (dad’s nickname for me), today the ship finally docked in Kuwait and my friends and I took a taxi to a market place. You should have seen it – the taxi broke down and there was smoke coming out of the front. We had to get into another one to finish the ride!” And I would think like: “Wow, this is really a bad place”… and I would hate it. It didn’t seem like it would be fun to be there. When my dad would get home though, he would bring stuff back for me and tell me how much fun it was and I would completely forget about the bad things. I guess rumours about how bad deployment is are just like rumours at school –they’re rarely true. (Elizabeth from BC)
About one week into my dad’s first deployment, I was about 6 years old (I think). Anyway, I have two older twin brothers who would have been 9 or 10 at the time. Well, they told me all sorts of things that happen on navy ships. They would make everything sound like it was a pirate’s ship, with mutiny in the air. “It’s every man (and woman) for themselves”, they would say. At night, (when I was most vulnerable), they would tell stories about how when they run low on food, the officers had to walk the plank until there were few enough people to survive on the remaining food. I thought my dad would be safe because he was a supply officer. But my brothers convinced me that, because of his job, he would be the first to go. I hate to admit it but I cried. I went to my mom and told her everything, and told her how worried I was. She quickly got up and went to the basement where my brothers were. She came back in 5 minutes and told me all about how my brothers were "stupid heads", as I said in first grade. Everything was fine and my dad came home after his scheduled deployment. I'm pretty sure the biggest wound on the ship was when the chef cut his finger making dinner. (From Greg in Belgium)
The call came in around 1 pm… and it was a call I’d never forget. It was the leader of the local deployment center… and he had called to tell me that my father had been sent to one of the most dangerous war zones that people could be sent to. My eyes went wide and the phone fell to the floor. I fell onto the floor and suddenly jolted up in my bed…It was all a dream! (Christopher from Ontario)