Artist On Board

Sketch by David Collier

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Hamilton-based cartoonist David Collier is the creator of the acclaimed Collier’s series and Just the Facts, both published by Drawn & Quarterly. In April, Collier took part in the Canadian Forces Artists Program, a storied project that invites Canadian artists to witness and document the military’s day-to-day operations.

The tradition of Canadian war art began during the First World War, with the creation of the Canadian War Memorial Fund in 1916; it was resumed during the Second World War with the Canadian War Records Program in 1942. In 1968, it was revived as the Canadian Armed Forces Civilian Artists Program (CAFCAP), which ran until 1995, when it was cancelled due to budget cuts. The initiative was re-launched in 2001 as the Canadian Forces Artists Program. Collier spent two weeks aboard the patrol frigate HMCS Toronto, where he observed navy drills in the waters off Newfoundland. What follows are his written and sketched impressions of that mission.

Day 5

Sometimes when military-type men are together shooting the breeze, the talk turns to the question of who’s the toughest of them all. You hear a lot about Russian soldiers.

"When I was in the army in Bosnia, the Russians came in to stop the flow of weapons," Leading Seaman Mike Murphy told me. "Those guys were mean. Oh-oh, they were mean." But if an artist like me had the franchise to vote for the toughest people with guns, I'd vote for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans officers. They have to board foreign ships alone and live there, sometimes for days at a time. It's one thing to be a badass at 20. But it's a sign you’re the real thing if you’re still a badass at age 50.

After we were out to sea, Captain Moors revealed our sovereignty patrol and fisheries enforcement mission over the ship's PA. The presence of two Fisheries and Oceans officers was a tipoff to the crew. But I was in the dark. Before I left home, I asked where the HMCS Toronto’s mission was headed; I received a terse, one-sentence e-mail reply: "The program is not to be revealed."

Was my face ever red. As the grandson of Richard Collier, the last survivor of the April 1918 British Royal Marines attack on the Mole at Zeebrugge, Belgium, I should have known better than to ask. How many hundreds of times did Granddad tell me about the secrecy of operations?

It's weird, many of my friends have so many bad things to say about the Canadian military, and yet I feel I'm on the good ship Greenpeace. Well OK, maybe the original environmental stewardship vessel Greenpeace didn't carry torpedoes and missiles, but because of budget cuts and the merging of resources, some of Canada's marine environment monitoring and protection work has been turned over to the navy. It was in a navy Zodiac boat that we set out from HMCS Toronto's starboard side with a water sampling crew in an attempt to trace the perpetrator of a large, oily bilge dump at 48° 06.9' N, 047° 19.8' W.

When I'm with my family, we cherish any opportunity to listen to the planet without artificial intrusions. For example, a canoe trip two or three portages beyond the nearest road and motorboat is a chance to get away from the excessive light pollution created by people. But if you really want to see the night sky in all its starry glory, try a navy ship in the middle of the Atlantic.

We travel in total darkness. Even the corridors inside the ship have nothing but red light inside. The doors have draping around the inside so even this minimal light doesn't show. And since stealth is the order of the day, we travel quietly. This morning at sunrise, I saw a pod of a dozen whales not more than a stone's throw off the stern. The sailor on watch couldn't believe it. "I've never seen such a large pod, or whales so close,” he said.

The Captain's original plan was to drop the rib, a powerful speed boat, into the water with a boarding party of sailors and the two Department of Fisheries and Oceans officers a full 24 kilometres from the fishing ships, so our speed boat could make the hour-long voyage to the side of the foreign vessel without being detected by their radar. But visibility was poor. So the Captain decided to put the hammer down and "ride this ship like the stallion it is!" It was an exhilarating trip; we skimmed over the waves like a 250-foot Sea-Doo.

Best of all, the Captain's gambit paid off. We were fast enough to arrive on the scene before the fishing boat could dump its illegal catch. The fisheries officers quickly got into the rib with two of our sailors and got to the Portuguese ship and were able to serve the Portuguese with three citations. For such major violations, a European Union patrol vessel has to come from the other side of the Atlantic to deal with ships from the EU.

* * *

The DFO officers have been on the Portuguese ship for almost 24 hours now. In the night, a meal was taken over to them in the rib. How the officers are being treated on the Portuguese ship, we don't know. Apparently, it's not unheard of for DFO officers to stay on foreign fishing ships for eight days, securing the scene of the crime, as it were, all the while receiving regular visits from Canadian craft.

As for the artists… François and I pass the night in our makeshift studio, drawing in our sketchbooks. It's an odd feeling to be with another grown man who also has children, responsibilities, etc., quietly drawing. Such are the paradoxes of being engaged in an innocent activity on a war ship.