HMCS Charlottetown ‘pushing up’ awareness at sea
By Lookout on Sep 25, 2016 with Comments 0
Lt(N) Bill King, HMCS Charlottetown ~
On Aug. 19, our Defence Minister, the Honourable Harjit Sajjan, posted a video to his Facebook page showing him doing 22 pushups as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the high suicide rate among Canadian and American Armed Forces members, veterans and first responders.
Statistics gathered in the United States in 2013, revealed that an average of 22 veterans committed suicide each day. Here in Canada, we lost 160 veterans to suicide between 2004 and 2014, more than the total number of Canadian Armed Forces members killed in Afghanistan.
The challenge – film yourself doing 22 pushups a day for 22 days and nominate others to do the same.
The Commanding Officer and crew members on board HMCS Charlottetown were challenged by friends and former shipmates to support the cause while deployed in the Mediterranean Sea. In a video of almost half the ship’s company doing pushups on the flight deck, Commander Andrew Hingsten said, “The 22 Pushup Challenge is intended to raise national awareness of the high number of veteran suicides, and the associated mental health issues. Unfortunately, these issues are all too real in our line of work. I looked for 21 friends to participate, but I found so many more.”
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