Description
Collin Fitzgerald
Mr. Collin Fitzgerald was born in Ottawa March 14, 1979. At the age of 8, Collin’s parents encouraged him to join the Cadet Program leading him towards becoming a reservist. At the age of 17 and with the inspiration of World War Two and Korea Veterans, Collin made the decision to transfer over to Regular Force joining the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. He rose to the rank of Master Corporal after his 15 years of military service. In 2000 he attended battle school in Wainwright, Alberta, then posted to Winnipeg. In September of that same year he accepted a deployment to Bosnia. In 2006, Mr. Fitzgerald attached himself to 5 Platoon B Company and deployed to Afghanistan under the regiment, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Experiencing intense combat during his time in Afghanistan, Mr. Fitzgerald was presented the Sacrifice Medal for his services and courageous acts of duty towards his fellow comrades. Upon discharge from the military, Mr. Fitzgerald suffered with PTSD and with the help of many supporters he was able to reintegrate into civilian life. He presently is highly involved in giving back to the military community and is a strong advocate for Highway of Heroes and many other service related initiatives. Mr. Fitzgerald now resides in Kingston, Ontario.
Transcript
And then they hit me five more times as I dove back into the house. Now I don’t know if I would recommend this to anybody because again like I said there is other avenues to go down. There’s help out there. I didn’t reach out and take a hold of that help. By the time that this had happened I got myself to that point and I was just done with life. Everything had been and I was just done with it. When you are in that state of mind basically when I’ve lost everything, everything was… my marriage was done, my relationship with my children, everything was going and I was gonna get rid of it all and I just wanted to be gone from this place. So after they hit me with the Arwen I was in a lot of pain and it’s a very good approach to using as opposed to lethal force. The police saved my life that day, they saved my life. And when I came out of the house they arrested me under the mental health act and the police officers that came and cuffed me were the same guys that were there to subdue me. And I looked up at them and I said, “This has got nothing to do with you guys.” And they said, “We know Collin, we know.” I remember one of the officers saying, “Collin, I just want you to see this,” and he showed me his cell phone. His brother is in the infantry with the RCR and while this was all transpiring and they were engaging in text messaging with each other and his brother, a Royal, was messaging and said the guy is a good guy, he was talking about me. I still to this day don’t know who he is but he was saying, “The guy is a good guy. He’s just really, really messed up.”