Assunta Aquino is telling her war story at a pivotal time, both in her own life and in Canada’s relationship with its veterans.
The North Vancouver veteran served back-to-back tours of duty in Bosnia and Herzegovina, helping the country rid itself of deadly mines left over from a brutal conflict.
Following the 1991 dissolution of Yugoslavia, the Bosniak, Croat and Serb ethnoreligious groups took up arms, seeking their own independent states.
“It was just an all-out war. Everybody. Every level. It didn’t matter. Children, not children. There was no differentiation,” Aquino said.
The United Nations, Europoean Union and NATO sought to bring peace and stability back to the region. According to the Department of National Defence, some 40,000 Canadian Forces members were deployed in the Balkan region between 1992 and 2010 as peacekeepers. Of those, 23 lost their lives in demining efforts, collecting and destroying weapons, monitoring and assisting with elections, and providing humanitarian assistance.
Fresh from her West Vancouver Secondary graduation in 1994, Aquino met a Canadian Forces member who’d just returned from deployment in Bosnia. The encounter motivated Aquino to enlist herself.
Within five years, she’d become an army engineer and been promoted to sergeant but, by then, Canada’s involvement in the Balkans had been drastically scaled back. It wasn’t until 2004 that she had the opportunity to deploy overseas and serve in a demining unit. She had the distinction of being the first ever woman deployed in that capacity.
“It was rewarding. It was exactly my trade. It was what they needed,” she said. “They were left with nothing. No stability, no money, no structure. But a whole lot of mines.”
In her role, Aquino was responsible for four separate minefields, overseeing Bosniak demining teams as well as being called frequently to carefully help dispose of other unexploded ordnance turning up on roadsides and in people’s homes and yards.
“They would mine their own homes. They would mine the schools. They would mine the farms. Unfortunately, because records weren’t kept, they now still have I-don’t-even-know-how-many hundreds of thousands of mines still in the ground.”
Aquino and her staff would delicately probe the soil with metal rods looking for anti-tank or anti-personnel mines lying in wait. Finding them was one thing. The dangerous part was getting them out of the ground and disposing of them.
“Usually we would demine, make a pile, and then on Fridays, at a specific time, we would blow all of those mines in place. We would blow probably 30 or 40 at once. It was huge,” she said.
The risk was real. Today, Aquino’s face strains as she recalls the traumatic day when she received her first injury and two of her team members were killed.
“I was in a minefield when another non-governmental agency blew their pile in place, which unfortunately then detonated mines in my minefield. And that’s when I lost deminers,” she said. “It took a very long time to get control of that minefield, because now none of you can move.”
Despite the pain, Aquino felt a sense of duty and stayed in Bosnia, signing on for another tour, this time under the auspices of the European Union
Two more severe injuries followed.
“Those would have been more major to me,” she said. “Those are the ones I try and stay away from discussing, because they were multinational incidents that were gender specific.”
The contingent she belonged to was small, and she never reported the assaults.
“You accept that there are going to be problems in the minefield. There are going to be awful, awful things that happen. And you know that these, these other events, I just don’t even think you expect to happen,” she said. “It’s a big moral injury”
After the war
Aquino later had the opportunity to serve in Afghanistan but, by then, she was starting a family and priorities changed. And, although she tried to suppress the trauma, she was finding her experiences were affecting her ability to do the job.
“I then started to not be able to go out to the field. I was too scared to be out at night, and that you can’t really do as a combat engineer,” she said.
She stayed with the Canadian Forces working in desk jobs until 2015, when the cumulative impact of her injuries was too great to ignore and she was released for medical reasons.
Aquino used to attend Remembrance Day ceremonies religiously until a few years ago when she had no choice but to turn all of her attention toward her own mental health. It’s been a journey.
“I made a promise to myself that I would shout from the mountaintops, that mental health needs to be addressed in the military,” she said. “There shouldn’t be any shame attached.”
No small part of Aquino’s recovery has been her selection to represent Canada at the 2025 Invictus Games in Whistler. Invictus, which is Latin for “unconquered,” was founded by Prince Harry as a means celebrate the fighting spirit and capabilities of sick and wounded veterans and service personnel.
Aquino has been training hard for the games where she will compete in alpine skiing, sitting volleyball, swimming, and skeleton.
“It really did make me feel alive again,” she said. “It gave me the push to realize that I still have skills.”
In 2023, she made her return to a cenotaph on Nov. 11 and found a family’s embrace among some of her 6th Field Engineer Squadron.
“It was good to be back,” she said. “It was good to feel that.”
Remembering modern veterans
Canada’s Remembrance Day traditions are sacred. But they’re also highly oriented toward the First World War and Second World War. The last known surviving Canadian veteran of the First World War died in 2010. And the Second World War vets who remain with us would be over 100 today.
With Bosnia, Canadians don’t have the same level of understanding about the nature of the conflict, why we were there and what our veterans’ contributions were, Aquino said.
“It was a short war in comparison, and it was between a bunch of factions that I think no one really understood or had any education about,” she said. “Unless that’s explained to you, it’s really hard to understand.”
It’s partly what motivates Aquino to speak about her service, including going into schools to help share the story. It helps to keep the continuity of remembrance alive, even as we lose our living connections with the two World Wars.
“It’s staying alive because we are committed all over the world. Every day. It doesn’t change. Whether it’s World War Two or Syria or Bosnia or Afghanistan, we are still serving all around the world, and we still need to remember that,” she said.
Since the end of the Second World War, every Canadian who has served in the military has done so by choice. And always, Aquino said, it has been out of a drive to offer help. It’s a message she hopes resonates with people as they attend a Remembrance Day ceremony or don a poppy this year.
“Yes, I feel like the Canadians that put up their hands voluntarily to go, that’s why they’re there,” she said.
