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   Shantell Powell (shanmonster@c.im)'s status on Saturday, 09-Nov-2024 16:10:09 JST Shantell Powell

   Today is Indigenous Veterans Day, and I want to honour my Inuk/Mi'kmaw father, Chesley Powell. He was a peacekeeper in the 60s and very early 70s. He was exposed to all sorts of awful chemicals (PCBs and Agent Orange) which caused skin issues for him and likely caused the joint issues my sister, her daughter, and I were born with.

   He was a private with the Black Watch and served in Cyprus, Israel, Jamaica, as well as in Canada during the FLQ Crisis.

   He wasn't born in Canada but in Newfoundland when it was still a British colony. He ended up as the honour guard for Queen Elizabeth and her mother, probably because he looked very good in uniform. He was a very handsome man in his youth and made for primo arm candy.

   Fun trivia: at one point, someone had the bright idea to change the way the Black Watch presented arms to the Queen. Previously, they all kneeled on both knees. On the occasion of the ill-thought-out change, they instead knelt on one knee with the other up. Considering they were all in kilts and were in full regimental mode, the Queen saw a lot of soldier junk swinging free. Dad was in the front row and totally flashed the Queen.

   She didn't lose her composure but decreed that the Black Watch should go back to their previous method of presenting arms.
   #IndigenousVeteransDay #Indigenous #PeaceKeeper #warrior #Veteran #military #QueenElizabeth #BlackWatch

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Shantell Powell (shanmonster@c.im)'s status on Saturday, 09-Nov-2024 16:10:36 JST Shantell Powell

     in reply to

     He was also an athlete and competed in the NATO Games. He was a cross country skier, a distance runner, speed skater, and a sharpshooter. His professional competition sport was biathlon. He once told me that he was the one who came up with the skating style of cross country skiing, but I don't know about that. But who knows? He was a speed skater, so I'm sure the movement translated over to skiing naturally for him. #IndigenousVeteransDay #Indigenous #NATO #biathlon #CrossCountrySkiing #SpeedSkating #sports

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.