Retired Maj. Stephen Boyne was still in high school when he joined the Canadian Armed Forces, signing up with the Aurora-based Queen’s York Rangers regiment in 1985.
After attending university in Victoria and at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Maj. Boyne joined the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
From there, he was deployed to the former Yugoslavia in later 1992, as part of the UN peacekeeping force in Croatia, set up to maintain peace in the wake of a series of ethnic conflicts, dubbed the Yugoslav Wars.
Maj. Boyne spent seven months, including his 25th birthday — “just another day,” he said — deployed in the country.
“The peace — it was quite new. So there was still an awful lot of ongoing violence between the Serbs and the Croatians, which required the United Nations Forces to intervene,” he said.
As part of the peacekeeping force, Maj. Boyne’s battalion dealt with humanitarian convoys, safeguarding weapons stockpiles and helping with weekly family reunification efforts.
“One of the towns, the dividing line between the Serbian enclave and Croatia, went through the town. So it had separated families, you had family members that hadn't seen each other in a year or two as a result of the conflict,” he said. “So we set up a family reunification where we would escort people from one side to the other to meet with the family members and then escort them back to their side.”
Maj. Boyne retired in 2010, and since that time has been involved with the Aurora Legion’s poppy campaign. He said the annual event remains an important reminder for residents and governments of the cost of war.
“After having served, I think it is very important. If we lose sight of the human cost of conflict, it makes it easier to engage in conflict again,” he said. “We sort of lose sight of how much conflicts like World War One, World War Two, Korea, the Afghan war cost in terms of those killed, wounded.”
“It makes it that much easier for governments to see going to war as being the easy solution to a problem.”
He said while Remembrance Day is most commonly associated with the First and Second World Wars, it remains an important to event to highlight the new generation of veterans.
“It also helps to remind people that there are new veterans, all the time, particularly with the fact that Canada has been in the forefront of peacekeeping, and, heavily involved in the Afghan war,” said Maj. Boyne.
