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After his military career was halted by a training accident that left him with a traumatic brain injury, Gunner Adam Jones wasn’t sure who was he was anymore.
Jones had grown up in a military family with a tradition of continuous service that dates to the American Revolutionary War. He didn’t consider any other career after high school: He applied to the Canadian Forces for three consecutive years until gaining a place with Ottawa’s 30th Field Artillery Regiment in 2012.
“I said to the recruiter, ‘I don’t care how you get me in, just get me in,’” says the now 26-year-old from Barrie, Ont. “I always felt drawn to the military.”
His career, however, did not unfold as he had envisioned. During a July 2013 training exercise, Jones fell awkwardly from an elevated cargo net on an obstacle course at Camp Meaford. He broke his hand in the two-storey fall and strained his neck.
But Jones was so keen to return to active duty that he didn’t report his concussion symptoms, which included headaches and memory problems. He was back with his unit within weeks.
“I had this attitude of ‘Suck it up and soldier on,’” he says. “That was my driving force.”
So he carried on. That is, until he fell while marching in an Ottawa parade square in May 2014 — Jones isn’t sure what happened — and struck his head. He went into a concussive seizure.
Jones was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. For three months, he had difficulty balancing, walking and speaking; his memory was impaired; he couldn’t concentrate enough to carry on a linear conversation, perform basic math or spell common words.
Jones saw a parade of doctors, physiotherapists, speech pathologists and other specialists, but his recovery was slow. He was depressed by his sick-leave “MELs:” the regularly issued list of Military Employment Limitations that told him he couldn’t handle firearms or explosives, that he couldn’t take part in drill or unit exercises. “That list haunted me for a long time,” he says. “It was a reminder of all those things I used to do that I wasn’t allowed to do.”
In the summer of 2014, a medical officer delivered the news: Jones would never return to active military service. Dr. Robert Riddell told Jones he needed to start thinking about what he would do with the rest of his life.
“Good can come from this,” Riddell assured him. “There are other ways to serve.”
At just 22 years of age, Jones had a hard time accepting that his military career was over. He considered joining the French Foreign Legion. But Jones ultimately embarked on a dramatically different path: He enrolled in classical studies at Carleton University, picked up the cello and joined a ballet class.
After the American Revolutionary War, about 3,000 Blacks who had fought on the losing British side were transported from New York State to Nova Scotia. Most were former slaves.
One of them was Samuel Jones, who settled on some farmland in Truro, N.S., in an area known as “The Marsh.” There, for generations, the Joneses would carve out a place for themselves as farmers and soldiers. One would be decorated for valour at Vimy Ridge.
In June 1916, Jeremiah Jones lied about his age — he was more than 50 — to enlist in the Canadian Army. The following April, during the momentous Battle of Vimy Ridge, Jones volunteered to attack an enemy machine-gun nest that had pinned down his unit with blistering fire. Alone, Jones crept near enough to lob a grenade at the enemy position, and brought back the surviving Germans as prisoners.
Injured at Vimy and again at Passchendaele, Jeremiah Jones was discharged in 1918 and quietly returned to his family in Truro. It wasn’t until 50 years after his death, in 2010, that he was awarded the Canadian Forces’ Distinguished Service Medallion for his heroism at Vimy Ridge. His great, great grandson, Adam Jones, was at the ceremony where the honour was presented.
“I got to see how much that meant to the family. It happened at an age where it really resonated with me,” Jones said.
It also steeled his determination to pursue a military career.
At his doctor’s urging, Gunner Adam Jones enrolled part-time in Greek and Roman Studies at Carleton University in September 2014. He had an affinity for history, and he needed something new on which to focus.
“I had to stop mourning the end of my career. I had to be actively working toward something else,” he says.
Social scientists call it “role exit:” leaving one identity-defining position for another. Such transitions require people to leave behind the values, routines and expectations of one institution and adopt those of another. For soldiers going to university or college, role exit can be a particularly difficult challenge since they’re moving from warrior to student, from barracks to campus.
For Jones, the first few months at Carleton only deepened his depression. He felt adrift among the river of young students, and out of place in classrooms. He missed the camaraderie of his fellow soldiers, their sense of shared of purpose, the structure of their days.
At Canadian Forces Health Services Centre Ottawa, Jones shared his discontent with his social worker, who argued that the problem didn’t reside with the school, but with him. She suggested he was being lazy, and that he needed to push himself.
Although slighted at first, Jones took her message to heart. The problem was that all of the things he really enjoyed were now denied him: He couldn’t box or ski or play hockey. Since all contact sports were off the table due to his brain injury, he sought out new ideas.
His physiotherapist told him that ballet was among the most physically demanding forms of exercise still available to him. On the internet, he learned that string instruments were considered exceptionally difficult to learn as an adult. And although Jones had no real interest in ballet or music — “I’m not a musical or creative person at all,” he says — he aspired to their challenge, and threw himself into both pursuits with military gusto.
In early 2015, he rented a cello and took lessons with three music instructors in different parts of the city. At the same time, Jones enrolled in beginner ballet classes at both Carleton and the University of Ottawa. For good measure, he also took up rowing.
“That’s how the reinvention started,” he says now. “When I was attacking a problem like that, I felt the same thing I felt when I was soldiering: I was motivated again. I felt like I was in a struggle.
“I didn’t have the sergeant yelling at me, but I had that same voice in my head: ‘You must do this. This is hard, but you must push through.’ It felt really good because it felt like I had a purpose again.”
“I didn’t have the sergeant yelling at me, but I had that same voice in my head: ‘You must do this. This is hard, but you must push through.’ It felt really good because it felt like I had a purpose again.”
Jones set a demanding schedule. In cello, he went from learning how to hold the instrument to playing music by ear. In ballet, he began with a simple balance manoeuver but would graduate to pliés and pirouettes. “My approach to all of these things, I kind of just attack them with persistence: set a schedule, make a routine, consistently work the problem. I know that makes me a very uninspired musician or dancer, but it worked for me.”
It was the same approach he had used to learn the skills of an artillery soldier: how to move, load, aim and fire a howitzer.
Rowing eventually began to dominate his schedule of extracurricular activities. He went quickly from recreational rowing to competitive, and joined the university’s varsity team. Last summer, he competed at the Invictus Games for injured soldiers as a rower and sprinter.
Before he was injured, Jones liked to describe himself as “just a grunt in the army doing army things.” Several years into his university career, however, he had started to think of himself as a student, athlete and artist.
“I realized that although they were different from what I had done before, music, rowing and dance were extremely challenging mentally and physically,” he says. “They’ve really helped in my recovery — and helped me find a new identity.”
And while that identity is still taking shape, Jones believes he has now arrived on his new mission in life.
While at Carleton, Jones has served in the Canadian Forces military unit that supports injured soldiers, which has allowed him time to prepare for his official medical release in May. That moment will mark the beginning of his new life as a civilian.
“A traumatic brain injury strips away who you were — and that was really hard for me to accept,” Jones says. “I can no longer derive my entire self worth from being a soldier.”
But, almost four years after his accident, Jones believes he has arrived upon an important new mission: to ease the transition of other soldiers and veterans marching into university.
Last year, he launched the Carleton University Student Veterans Association, the first such support group for soldiers and veterans in Canada. It’s modelled after Student Veterans of America, a 10-year-old non-profit group that now has 1,500 chapters at colleges across the United States.
Jones’ organization is dedicated to helping veterans understand all of the programs, services and financial aids that are available to them as students. (The Canadian Forces, Veterans Affairs Canada, the Soldier On Fund and the Royal Canadian Legion all offer special support programs and bursaries.) “It took me about three years to figure out all of the disparate programs and services,” he says. “It was really hard for me, so I asked myself, ‘How do I make it easier for the next guy?’”
The club — it now has about 40 members at Carleton — is also designed to ease the social isolation that many veterans experience in university, and help them transition to campus life. “In the military, you are basically issued friends along with your boots,” Jones says. “You work together, eat together, sleep in the same room. But on campus, that doesn’t happen. You’re really on your own.”
“In the military, you are basically issued friends along with your boots,” Jones says. “You work together, eat together, sleep in the same room. But on campus, that doesn’t happen. You’re really on your own.”
Jones has received calls and emails from student veterans across the country, and wants to take his organization national in order to serve them. He calls it his new mission: “I’ve been helped a lot to get to this point, and I feel like my driving force now is to help other people. I feel like that’s the best way for me to make a difference.”
Jones still suffers headaches, and remains sensitive to noise and light; he experiences bouts of depression and short-term memory issues. He hopes to graduate from Carleton in 2020.
“People who meet me now are shocked because I’m not the person I was,” he says. “At first, that was devastating because I felt tremendous loss for the person I was, but now I am really happy with who I am.”
aduffy@postmedia.com
Photos and video: Wayne Cuddington
查看原文...
Jones had grown up in a military family with a tradition of continuous service that dates to the American Revolutionary War. He didn’t consider any other career after high school: He applied to the Canadian Forces for three consecutive years until gaining a place with Ottawa’s 30th Field Artillery Regiment in 2012.
“I said to the recruiter, ‘I don’t care how you get me in, just get me in,’” says the now 26-year-old from Barrie, Ont. “I always felt drawn to the military.”
His career, however, did not unfold as he had envisioned. During a July 2013 training exercise, Jones fell awkwardly from an elevated cargo net on an obstacle course at Camp Meaford. He broke his hand in the two-storey fall and strained his neck.
But Jones was so keen to return to active duty that he didn’t report his concussion symptoms, which included headaches and memory problems. He was back with his unit within weeks.
“I had this attitude of ‘Suck it up and soldier on,’” he says. “That was my driving force.”
So he carried on. That is, until he fell while marching in an Ottawa parade square in May 2014 — Jones isn’t sure what happened — and struck his head. He went into a concussive seizure.
Jones was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. For three months, he had difficulty balancing, walking and speaking; his memory was impaired; he couldn’t concentrate enough to carry on a linear conversation, perform basic math or spell common words.
Jones saw a parade of doctors, physiotherapists, speech pathologists and other specialists, but his recovery was slow. He was depressed by his sick-leave “MELs:” the regularly issued list of Military Employment Limitations that told him he couldn’t handle firearms or explosives, that he couldn’t take part in drill or unit exercises. “That list haunted me for a long time,” he says. “It was a reminder of all those things I used to do that I wasn’t allowed to do.”
In the summer of 2014, a medical officer delivered the news: Jones would never return to active military service. Dr. Robert Riddell told Jones he needed to start thinking about what he would do with the rest of his life.
“Good can come from this,” Riddell assured him. “There are other ways to serve.”
At just 22 years of age, Jones had a hard time accepting that his military career was over. He considered joining the French Foreign Legion. But Jones ultimately embarked on a dramatically different path: He enrolled in classical studies at Carleton University, picked up the cello and joined a ballet class.
•
After the American Revolutionary War, about 3,000 Blacks who had fought on the losing British side were transported from New York State to Nova Scotia. Most were former slaves.
One of them was Samuel Jones, who settled on some farmland in Truro, N.S., in an area known as “The Marsh.” There, for generations, the Joneses would carve out a place for themselves as farmers and soldiers. One would be decorated for valour at Vimy Ridge.
In June 1916, Jeremiah Jones lied about his age — he was more than 50 — to enlist in the Canadian Army. The following April, during the momentous Battle of Vimy Ridge, Jones volunteered to attack an enemy machine-gun nest that had pinned down his unit with blistering fire. Alone, Jones crept near enough to lob a grenade at the enemy position, and brought back the surviving Germans as prisoners.
Injured at Vimy and again at Passchendaele, Jeremiah Jones was discharged in 1918 and quietly returned to his family in Truro. It wasn’t until 50 years after his death, in 2010, that he was awarded the Canadian Forces’ Distinguished Service Medallion for his heroism at Vimy Ridge. His great, great grandson, Adam Jones, was at the ceremony where the honour was presented.
“I got to see how much that meant to the family. It happened at an age where it really resonated with me,” Jones said.
It also steeled his determination to pursue a military career.
•
At his doctor’s urging, Gunner Adam Jones enrolled part-time in Greek and Roman Studies at Carleton University in September 2014. He had an affinity for history, and he needed something new on which to focus.
“I had to stop mourning the end of my career. I had to be actively working toward something else,” he says.
Social scientists call it “role exit:” leaving one identity-defining position for another. Such transitions require people to leave behind the values, routines and expectations of one institution and adopt those of another. For soldiers going to university or college, role exit can be a particularly difficult challenge since they’re moving from warrior to student, from barracks to campus.
For Jones, the first few months at Carleton only deepened his depression. He felt adrift among the river of young students, and out of place in classrooms. He missed the camaraderie of his fellow soldiers, their sense of shared of purpose, the structure of their days.
At Canadian Forces Health Services Centre Ottawa, Jones shared his discontent with his social worker, who argued that the problem didn’t reside with the school, but with him. She suggested he was being lazy, and that he needed to push himself.
Although slighted at first, Jones took her message to heart. The problem was that all of the things he really enjoyed were now denied him: He couldn’t box or ski or play hockey. Since all contact sports were off the table due to his brain injury, he sought out new ideas.
His physiotherapist told him that ballet was among the most physically demanding forms of exercise still available to him. On the internet, he learned that string instruments were considered exceptionally difficult to learn as an adult. And although Jones had no real interest in ballet or music — “I’m not a musical or creative person at all,” he says — he aspired to their challenge, and threw himself into both pursuits with military gusto.
In early 2015, he rented a cello and took lessons with three music instructors in different parts of the city. At the same time, Jones enrolled in beginner ballet classes at both Carleton and the University of Ottawa. For good measure, he also took up rowing.
“That’s how the reinvention started,” he says now. “When I was attacking a problem like that, I felt the same thing I felt when I was soldiering: I was motivated again. I felt like I was in a struggle.
“I didn’t have the sergeant yelling at me, but I had that same voice in my head: ‘You must do this. This is hard, but you must push through.’ It felt really good because it felt like I had a purpose again.”
“I didn’t have the sergeant yelling at me, but I had that same voice in my head: ‘You must do this. This is hard, but you must push through.’ It felt really good because it felt like I had a purpose again.”
Jones set a demanding schedule. In cello, he went from learning how to hold the instrument to playing music by ear. In ballet, he began with a simple balance manoeuver but would graduate to pliés and pirouettes. “My approach to all of these things, I kind of just attack them with persistence: set a schedule, make a routine, consistently work the problem. I know that makes me a very uninspired musician or dancer, but it worked for me.”
It was the same approach he had used to learn the skills of an artillery soldier: how to move, load, aim and fire a howitzer.
Rowing eventually began to dominate his schedule of extracurricular activities. He went quickly from recreational rowing to competitive, and joined the university’s varsity team. Last summer, he competed at the Invictus Games for injured soldiers as a rower and sprinter.
Before he was injured, Jones liked to describe himself as “just a grunt in the army doing army things.” Several years into his university career, however, he had started to think of himself as a student, athlete and artist.
“I realized that although they were different from what I had done before, music, rowing and dance were extremely challenging mentally and physically,” he says. “They’ve really helped in my recovery — and helped me find a new identity.”
And while that identity is still taking shape, Jones believes he has now arrived on his new mission in life.
•
While at Carleton, Jones has served in the Canadian Forces military unit that supports injured soldiers, which has allowed him time to prepare for his official medical release in May. That moment will mark the beginning of his new life as a civilian.
“A traumatic brain injury strips away who you were — and that was really hard for me to accept,” Jones says. “I can no longer derive my entire self worth from being a soldier.”
But, almost four years after his accident, Jones believes he has arrived upon an important new mission: to ease the transition of other soldiers and veterans marching into university.
Last year, he launched the Carleton University Student Veterans Association, the first such support group for soldiers and veterans in Canada. It’s modelled after Student Veterans of America, a 10-year-old non-profit group that now has 1,500 chapters at colleges across the United States.
Jones’ organization is dedicated to helping veterans understand all of the programs, services and financial aids that are available to them as students. (The Canadian Forces, Veterans Affairs Canada, the Soldier On Fund and the Royal Canadian Legion all offer special support programs and bursaries.) “It took me about three years to figure out all of the disparate programs and services,” he says. “It was really hard for me, so I asked myself, ‘How do I make it easier for the next guy?’”
The club — it now has about 40 members at Carleton — is also designed to ease the social isolation that many veterans experience in university, and help them transition to campus life. “In the military, you are basically issued friends along with your boots,” Jones says. “You work together, eat together, sleep in the same room. But on campus, that doesn’t happen. You’re really on your own.”
“In the military, you are basically issued friends along with your boots,” Jones says. “You work together, eat together, sleep in the same room. But on campus, that doesn’t happen. You’re really on your own.”
Jones has received calls and emails from student veterans across the country, and wants to take his organization national in order to serve them. He calls it his new mission: “I’ve been helped a lot to get to this point, and I feel like my driving force now is to help other people. I feel like that’s the best way for me to make a difference.”
Jones still suffers headaches, and remains sensitive to noise and light; he experiences bouts of depression and short-term memory issues. He hopes to graduate from Carleton in 2020.
“People who meet me now are shocked because I’m not the person I was,” he says. “At first, that was devastating because I felt tremendous loss for the person I was, but now I am really happy with who I am.”
aduffy@postmedia.com
Photos and video: Wayne Cuddington
查看原文...
