Interview with Paul Hook
Narrator: Major (Ret.) Paul Hook Interviewer: Interviewed by Nick Jordan. Interview Date and Location 24 February 2025 - Zoom Synopsis: 0:37 – 5:01: Life before military service, early impressions of the military in the United States and Canada; admission to the Royal Military College and the decision to join the armored corps. 5:01- 10:09: Basic Officer Training and life at RMC. Transition to the regiment, early lessons, and beginning a family. Grew up quickly. First child one year before deploying to Afghanistan. “The one constant is change; being okay with change; it's tough not being in control of things.”; “compartmentalize”. 10:09 - 15:00: Workups, pre-deployment training, and the birth of a child six months before deployment to Afghanistan. 5 vehicles, 19 crew members. 15:01 – 21:00: Deployment to Afghanistan; first impressions of Kabul; Kabul Multinational Brigade, exposure to international forces. 21:00 – 25:10: Reflections on the reality of the war, the impact of stress; men on the bridge and the acceptance of fate; morale and unit cohesion “work hard, play hard”; the role of members with deployment experience. 25:10 – 31:56: End of deployment, final patrols in “IED Alley”, post-deployment decompression in the UAE, “forced fun:, Surprised by two of their comrades struggling with their experience decades later. “At the mercy of someone else’s good planning,” “you have to hope you’re lucky that day.” “What did we spend all that national treasure of blood on?” “…if the situation is just going to revert back.” 40:11 – 47:23: Impressions of Andre Marin’s 2002 and 2008 reports, which he knew about and read, “people didn’t talk about PTSD; people understood what it was”, “we didn’t know enough as an organization.”; “the shock was that they weren’t being acted upon”. Mental health supports. 47:23 – 55:32: Peace Support Centre and master’s degree, turning point for understanding veteran mental health 55:32 – 1:00:45: The role of commemoration; connecting earlier points about the moral injury and how that can be salved or worsened by commemoration, 1:00:45 – 1:05:11: The interdisciplinary nature of veteran support and veteran mental health research. “Bio-psycho-social”, concluding remarks.
- In Collection:
- Interview #SC141_HP_941
- 01:05:11
- “The National Treasure of Blood”: The CAF’s Early Approaches to Mental Health
- 34.52813, 69.17233
- Canadian Military Oral History Collection
- Accession Number: 2026-0008; Series: VI; Item: 941
- Special Collections Finding Aid: https://search.archives.uvic.ca/military-oral-history-collection
- 2025
- Interview recorded in digital format for UVic Special Collections in Spring 2025. Recorded in digital format by interviewer. Keywords supplied by interviewer. Metadata by KD.
- Rights
- This interview has been posted with the understanding that it may be used for research purposes only. Should the interviewee or their heirs have any objections to this interview being accessible on the Internet, it will be removed promptly. Contact UVic Special Collections for permission if using for other than research purposes: speccoll@uvic.ca
- DOI