Canadian veterans furious over 8th suicide

Veterans demand action on military suicides after latest death
OTTAWA CITIZEN
BY CHRIS COBB
JANUARY 19, 2014

OTTAWA — Another member of the Canadian armed forces has died in an apparent suicide — the eighth in a little more than two months — bringing a furious reaction from a national veterans’ advocacy group.

The military confirmed Sunday that Lieut.-Col. Stéphane Beauchemin died in Limoges, just outside Ottawa, on Thursday last week but refused to confirm that the helicopter pilot had taken his own life.

Beauchemin, a veteran of deployments in Haiti in 1997 and Bosnia in 1999, was a client of the Joint Personnel Support Unit centre in Ottawa, the unit into which mentally and physically injured troops are posted before leaving the forces or returning to work.

Although the vast majority posted into JPSU are ultimately released from the military, a unit spokesman said Sunday that the officer was on a back-to-work program.
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