In Ottawa on Wednesday, Navy Lt.-Cdr. Karen O’Connell put on her uniform for a stay-at-home Remembrance Day, and in Lower Sackville, N.S., Lt.-Cdr. Eve Pickrem went online with her cadets to watch the virtual ceremony there.
Like everyone else used to attending services at war memorials, it was a different Nov. 11 for the two expat Newfoundlander and Labadorians, but still vitally important.
“Even when the children were in strollers, we would always go down to the cenotaph,” said O’Connell, who is from Kilbride.
Her husband, Wayne Burke, a retired naval bosun from Cape Breton, also donned his uniform.
Their daughter, Madison Burke, and son, Logan Burke, both sea cadets, stood with them.
Remembrance Day is a huge event in Nova Scotia, with its East Coast navy base, and Pickrem’s cadet unit is the largest in Altantic Canada. She said the Royal Canadian Legion, the cadets and their parents were all supportive of this year’s plans, as they didn’t want to contribute to any risk of spreading COVID-19.
In pre-pandemic times, the Remembrance Day ceremony in Lower Sackville is one of the largest in the Halifax Regional Municipality, bringing in hundreds of people from the Lower Sackville and surrounding areas, she said.
“It was different, but it was nice and it’s great we can still take part in the ceremony with our family,” she said of Wednesday’s virtual event.
Besides being a part-time military officer, Pickrem, who is originally from Baie de Verde, also works for the cadet program at the Department of National Defence as a civilian, and her husband, Corey, is full time in the military, working with the cadet program as a training officer in Shearwater. At home with the couple’s three-year-old son, Benjamin, they also honoured the fallen in full uniform.
While doing the best they can in an extraordinary year to still honour Remembrance Day, Pickrem said she and the cadets missed seeing the veterans and attending associated events afterward.
“Although it doesn’t seem so huge serving a meal to them, it’s just huge to them,” she said. “They really appreciate that. It’s huge for the cadets to get that exposure, so they know this is why we are here — this is Canada here in front of you with the blanket on their legs.”
O’Connell has had a long career in the military and is now a senior staff member of the naval reserve unit Carleton in Ottawa.
But she also has the distinction of having been Canada’s first female submariner.
She joined the naval reserves in 1986, as a cook, which wasn’t based on a culinary dream. Rather, it and engineering offered more opportunity for women to take on different roles in the navy at that time.
After 10 years, O’Connell was commissioned from the reserve ranks and has been in the regular force for about 25 years.
It wasn’t until 2001 that women were allowed to be submariners, as previously they were restricted because of the lack of separate sleeping and bathroom facilities on subs, until women pointed out it was a human rights violation to restrict them.
Her job was a naval warfare officer, basically the person who would fire the torpedoes.
In 1998 and 2001, she did major NATO deployments and has seen her duties take her to such locations as Norway, Russia, Lithuania, Scotland and the Azores.
Every few years she changes roles for new opportunities, but has not tired of military life.
“I have loved every minute of it,” she said.
Pickrem, who is just 33 years old, having achieved her rank of lieutenant commander — a promotion bestowed on her in a ceremony by her husband — received this year the national president’s award from the Navy League of Canada, which was presented to her in front of her peers in Shearwater.
“I was shocked,” she said. “This is not a program I do for myself. I do it for the kids.”
She said growing up in a small community, after-school programs and cadets were pretty much all they had for organized activities, and inspired her to stay involved in military life.
“I wanted to give back to the program and what it gave to me. It made me the person I am,” Pickrem said.
Although she’d like to take on higher roles, she expects it will still be with the cadet program.
“I don’t think I’ll ever leave the program. I love it. (The cadets) really look up to you. That’s where the satisfaction comes from. It’s awesome.”
Barb Sweet is an enterprise reporter in St. John’s.
