Veteran Art Little is seen here at the Brighton Legion. /Sarah Hyatt/MBC
Back in 1976, veteran Art Little took a chance and joined the army.
Today, you can often find Little at the Royal Canadian Legion Brighton Branch 100 – or your paths may have crossed leading up to Remembrance Day at places like Sobey’s, No Frills or the LCBO as he volunteers for the legion’s poppy campaign.
This is just one way Little chooses to honour veterans and those who gave their lives for freedom – or sometimes, people they never knew in lands they’d never known until war.
It’s through these volunteer shifts that he and his comrades continue to hear about “the miracle of the poppy” as people pass by at volunteer tables and collect their poppies leading up to Nov. 11. Among those who pass by are often high school students. For Little, it was at that age when his service started.
From training in Cornwallis, N.S., to Wainwright, Alta., to joining the 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) in Victoria, B.C., his service would end up taking him all over Canada.
“And then, still after more excitement, I decided to volunteer for the jump course so I went to Edmonton and got my wings – a very tough course,” said Little. “Following that, I joined the airborne regiment in Petawawa and did six years there, and they had a joint section here in Trenton, (which was) half air force guys, half army guys.”
“We knew the equipment – they knew the planes – and we put parachutes on the equipment to drop out of the planes.”
It was about this time they had talked Little into switching his trade and he was eyeing becoming a loadmaster on the Hercules but then “got a better offer from Toronto police.”
“In 1988, after 12 years with the military, I joined the Toronto police and I served 31 years, three months there.”
Little retired as an inspector in 2019.
As he and his wife Pam Little – who also serves as Brighton’s poppy campaign chair – were looking to move and slow down, he recalled his time in Trenton.
“We looked at Trenton (and) Belleville, and we found a really nice place here in Brighton. We moved here almost five years ago, and we joined the legion and love it here.”
Over the years, his service would also take him all over the world – even later after joining the Toronto Police Service. His first peacekeeping mission was with the airborne regiment back in 1980 in Cyprus for seven months, but he also ended up in places like Norway, and later, Afghanistan.
“In 2012, in Toronto, they were looking for volunteers to join the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan … so I ended up being in Kabul serving under an American colonel.”
His job there was as an advisor to the plainclothes operations of the Afghan National Police operating on an American base, he said.
“We were a couple of blocks away from the Canadian embassy and there were about 15 of us there and there were others in the UN (United Nations) establishments around the country.”
Reflecting on his experience there, he described a country essentially “just fighting to survive.”
“We tried …” he said.
And despite an official advisor title, that didn’t mean his time there wasn’t dangerous.
Often on Remembrance Day, people think about the First World War, the Second World War, and the Korean War, but people serving now are veterans – even in peacetime, they’re veterans – and they still need help and support, not just through Veterans Affairs Canada, but also through what the legions gather through poppy campaigns, said Little.
According to the Government of Canada, in Afghanistan alone more than 40,000 Canadians in uniform and hundreds of civilians and government officials served from 2001 to 2014 – making this the longest combat deployment in the nation’s history. While in Afghanistan, 158 Canadian Armed Forces members, a diplomat, four aid workers, a government contractor and a journalist lost their lives, and thousands of CAF members and civilians were also injured – physically and psychologically.
While Little was born in 1957, his parents and grandparents served and survived the world wars, including bombings in England, and never really said anything about it, he shared, noting his mom’s dad was a First World War vet and fire warden in Barrow-in-Furness (which is known for its shipbuilding and built Britain’s first submarine and later its first seaplane.)
Everyone worked in the dockyards and coming home at night, it was just, “oh, that house is gone – the kids have been moved out (or) they were still there” and “oh, dad’s gone off with his helmet and flashlight to tell them to close their curtains and whatnot.”
“But they lived through it – no Google, no TV, no cellphones – and they just did it.”
Eventually, as shipbuilding slowed after the war, the family made the move to Toronto with six kids “and they made a great life for them and us.”
This Remembrance Day, Little’s focus is on honouring not just his family, but so many others’ families. And residents should know there’s no shortage of stories locally and that acts of remembrance matter, he said.
Just the other day while volunteering for the poppy campaign at Sobey’s, Little said a woman was pushing her shopping cart and came by to get a poppy.
In another instance, one of his colleagues was handing out some stickers to a family with some youngsters during volunteer efforts. The act prompted a smile and some laughing – but it turned out that the child who has a neurodevelopmental condition had never smiled or laughed before this, said a visibly emotional Little, adding his colleague called it “the miracle of the poppy.”
“If you’re coming out of high school and you don’t know what you want to do, I signed on for three and I stayed for 12 (years), I was having such a good time. I would highly recommend anybody not knowing what they want to do to join the military.”
(Written by: Sarah Hyatt)
