by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Canadians, and especially Quebecers, have long been ambivalent towards their military, says filmmaker Paul Lapointe. We seem to like our soldiers just fine when they’re on peacekeeping missions and comfortably out of sight and out of mind.

But even when not engaged in a shooting war, soldiers get screwed up. Not by stray bullets, mortars or land mines—although that happens, all too often—but by the constant rotations and exposure to human misery and danger. According to the Canadian military ombudsman, between 15 and 20 per cent of soldiers returning from overseas deployments suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It’s a shocking number, and one Lapointe seizes on in his new documentary, Crash Landing/Opération Retour.

The film follows five Canadian veterans, all under the age of 40, who are trying their best to deal with PTSD. The problem is, the Canadian military doesn’t seem to be able to adequately treat it. Thousands of veterans suffer from it, but too few are helped.

“We wanted to put the question of PTSD in a public space, into the consciousness of Canadians in general,” says Crash Landing’s producer Lapointe. “Canadians, and Quebecers especially, have the impression that when the army goes to these places they’re going camping for five or six months.”

But camping expeditions don’t result in being placed on constant states of high alert, witnessing the Rwanda genocide, being taken hostage by Serbian militias fresh from the killing fields of Bosnia or seeing Somali children leap into fires to retrieve spent food packets. These are visions, sounds and smells that stay with the witnesses long after they return home, says Lapointe, and “come into our homes, our families and societies.”

Sweeping mentally damaged soldiers under the rug, by either discharging them or wishing the problem away, won’t work. “These have consequences not only on the person it affects, but on families and close relations,” Lapointe says. “Some commit suicide, others commit murder.”

Lapointe stumbled on to PTSD almost by accident. “I didn’t have it in mind when I set out to do this film,” he says. “Initially I wanted to do a piece on veterans who were fighting the government for their rights. But I changed direction when I found that these people couldn’t lead coherent lives.”

One of the few things psychologists and psychiatrists know about PTSD is that it isn’t a new phenomenon. “I went with a psychatrist to a therapy session one time and there was a group of soldiers there,” says Lapointe. “Two or three of them were veterans from the Korean War. One man, who was around 75, stood up and said that this was the first time he’s ever come to a meeting like this, but he’d been having nightmares for 50 years. And if there wasn’t a solution, he was going to kill himself, because he couldn’t take it anymore. He was dying of it.”

There is no cure for PTSD, only a treatment of its symptoms. And while Lapointe says he is encouraged by talk that the military is taking their ombudsman’s recommendations regarding PTSD treatment seriously, he hopes that the entire system will change to detect it early and effectively.

“There’s talk of increasing the military’s budget,” he says. “But the government shouldn’t be preoccupied with only things like equipment. They also need to concentrate on mental health.”

Crash Landing/Opération Retour runs at the Ex-Centris
(3536 St-Laurent) from Oct. 7–13