CAF Story | Fostering artistic talent in the military
Video / February 23, 2024
Transcript
In classical music, you have to be really disciplined because you need to practice every day, you need to maintain a certain level of fitness, you have to sleep your eight hours a day, but the main thing is the discipline. And in the military, discipline is a key element, so I think it’s one of the big things that I brought back from my classical training as an opera singer is the discipline.
So, my name is Josée Sulyma. My maiden name is Fortin. I am a Petty Officer, 1st Class and my job title is Human Resources Administrator and I am the Senior HRA on HMCS Winnipeg.
Band. Slow. March.
So, I had a friend with who I studied in music in university. He joined La Musique Royale du 22e Régiment as a trumpet player. And that kind of convinced me that, yeah, maybe artists do have a place in the military.
Basically, I was looking for something that would give me a challenge, that would give me the opportunity to travel, to be useful to my country. That was important because it was during the-- When I enrolled, during the Afghanistan War. That's why I decided to join the Navy. Oh, BMQ was fun.
[Laughing]
You had to learn your role and become a soldier. It was full of challenges. I was not the youngest, so I had to be really stubborn and go through it. And actually, I had a nickname in BMQ. My nickname was “Si bemol”, which is B-flat, which is a musical note because they knew I was a trained opera singer. So, on the rucksack march, I used to sing opera songs.
Well, as a singer or as a musician, often on ship we have a band, so we can organize some gigs. If you are in a foreign port and they organize an event, a social event, they might ask you to sing, like it happened to me on an impromptu when I was doing the Great Lake tour with the Ville de Québec.
The Blue Jays were playing in Detroit, and I was asked, oh, do you want to sing, by the way, the national anthem at the Tigers Stadium? You know, with that big stadium and I don't know how many people is in that stadium, but I could not see a single people, just little dots, my face with the microphone, and a giant screen. Of course, I was nervous. I didn't want to screw up, like we say, because I was representing my country. And when I moved to the West Coast, I had started doing gigs as well with the band, but their function is a bit different, so it was more like national anthems and official events.
[Applause]
The pride to sing the national anthem and represent your country, I think there's no word for it. It's
Yeah, it's really good.