It was 2006, and eight hundred soldiers from the Canadian Armed Forces
(CAF) base in pseudonymous "Armyville," Canada, were scheduled to deploy
to Kandahar. Many students in the Armyville school district were
destined to be affected by this and several subsequent deployments.
These deployments, however, represented such a new and volatile
situation that the school district lacked--as indeed most Canadians
lacked--the understanding required for an optimum organizational
response. Growing Up in Armyville provides a close-up look at the
adolescents who attended Armyville High School (AHS) between 2006 and
2010. How did their mental health compare with that of their peers
elsewhere in Canada? How were their lives affected by the Afghanistan
mission--at home, at school, among their friends, and when their parents
returned with post-traumatic stress disorder? How did the youngsters
cope with the stress? What did their efforts cost them? Based on
questions from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth,
administered to all youth attending AHS in 2008, and on in-depth
interviews with sixty-one of the youth from CAF families, this book
provides some answers. It also documents the partnership that occurred
between the school district and the authors' research team. Beyond its
research findings, this pioneering book considers the past, present, and
potential role of schools in supporting children who have been affected
by military deployments. It also assesses the broader human costs to CAF
families of their enforced participation in the volatile overseas
missions of the twenty-first century.
