Lesleyanne Ryan. Canadian Armed Forces Veteran. Peacekeeper. Novelist. Photographer. Traveller. Cat Lover.
Today is Canada Day.
In Newfoundland, July 1st is also Beaumont Hamel Day. So, in addition to waving the Maple Leaf and popping off fireworks, we also remember a battle that shaped our identity as a people. Continue reading “Beaumont Hamel – In his own words…”
Our calendars are filled with anniversaries. For the most part, they are dates set aside to celebrate or remember a specific event. They are also an opportunity to educate.
Thursday, July 11, 2013 is the eighteenth anniversary of the Fall of Srebrenica. On that day in 1995, the Bosnian Serb army invaded the town and subsequently murdered more than eight thousand men and boys. More than 6800 have since been positively identified through DNA and 5657 have been buried at the memorial site in Potocari (as of July, 2012). This week, four hundred more will be laid to rest in Potocari.
I served as a United Nations peacekeeper in Visoko, Bosnia from October, 1993 to April, 1994. My job was in administration, but as anyone in the military will tell you, you are a soldier first and a tradesman second. For me, that meant army stuff came before the paperwork so if they needed extra hands to man the sentry bunkers that surrounded our camp, for example, I could be pulled from my job for guard duty. Continue reading “Travel Shorts – Visoko, Bosnia”
When I started to write Braco, a lot of people were interested in where I came up with the idea for the book. It’s a personal story that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to tell, but the response has been so positive, I decided to include it in my readings.
Srebrenica is a small Bosniak town located close to the Serbian border about eighty kilometres east of Sarajevo. Before the war, the town had a population of six thousand with 60% identifying themselves as Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak and 30% as Bosnian Serb. (Today, the population is 95% Bosnian Serb).
When the war broke out in 1992, the town was quickly surrounded by the Bosnian Serb army and the Bosniak population in the town swelled to over 50,000. With little aid making its way through the Serb lines, a humanitarian crisis developed. Thousands lived under blankets in the streets in sub-zero temperatures. People killed each other over food. Disease was rampant, and through the winter of 92-93, the Serb army continued to shell the town from the surrounding hills. It was only a matter of time before this caught the attention of the world press. Continue reading “Why I wrote Braco”
