‘Roberts’ Bay’ renaming will honour fallen Saskatchewan soldier

Major Shelly Bellisle is one of the lead organizers of the geo-naming program, and she originally helped train Roberts before his deployment to Afghanistan.

“Josh worked for me, so he was between Saskatoon and Prince Albert for about 13 years. He first joined in Calgary, went through his infantry training, and then made friends with a lot of folks from the local area and he moved back to Prince Albert with them.”

At the time of Roberts’ passing, his fiancée Lise Malenfant in Prince Albert was pregnant with their first-born son Meyer. Since then, they have been the first to plant the wreath during Prince Albert’s Remembrance Day Ceremony.

Roberts was known as a ‘soldier’s soldier’ during his life, and someone who was incredibly reliable among his peers. He was promoted to the rank of Master Corporal just two weeks before his passing.

“Perfect imperfection is what you’d want to say. He wasn’t very good in school, but he was extremely intelligent. He was very creative. He was a critical thinker, and the biggest thing was he had empathy and passion for his fellow mates, he was always a team player. He was always someone who you could rely on. He would get the job done even if it was not by the book let’s say. He was always, always driven to serve,” said Bellisle.

There was some controversy around the circumstances of Roberts’ death as it was originally thought he was killed by friendly fire. Roberts and his group were involved with an operation in Afghanistan to try and disrupt Taliban insurgency in a farming area of the country, with Roberts operating a gun turret on one of the armoured vehicles. While training Afghan security forces, the group of armoured vehicles came under fire from small arms gunfire and rocket propelled grenades, and soon after they were being fired on from another direction.

It was initially believed that the second round of gunfire came from a private security company involved in an escort. They opened fire on the insurgents without realizing Canadian troops were already engaged in the fight, and that lead to Roberts being killed by friendly fire.

Bellisle said after investigations were completed, that was proven to not be the case.

“That was the initial thought before the investigation occurred, so there was pretty much a comms blackout immediately following that because it was a possibility it may have been friendly fire. It was proven there late afterwards that it was not, so there was a lot of confusion at that time, but it was not deemed a friendly fire incident. He was actually killed in the turret by enemy fire.”

As for the renaming ceremony, that is set to take place on Sept. 8, on the day that would have been Roberts’ 47 birthday.

Bellisle said there has been a lot of hoops to jump through to make sure that the renaming can officially go forward, such as respecting neighbouring First Nations, and acquiring support letters from across the country from friends and family of Roberts. Now that it’s finally going forward, she is happy to see that he will be properly honoured somewhere close enough for his family to visit.

“Unfortunately it’s a Monday and I totally understand if people can’t make it, but it’s so accessible that we envision people coming throughout the year and years to come because it is such a beautiful little lake.”

Final designs of a plaque and placement for it are still being decided on.

During his military service, Roberts earned the Canadian Peacekeeping Service Medal for spending at least 30 days in UN or an international peacekeeping mission, NATO Medal for his military service of at least 30 days in the area formerly known as Yugoslavia, and Bar, Sacrifice Medal (Posthumous) after his death in combat.

Lest We Forget.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com

by Nick Nielsen

‘Roberts’ Bay’ renaming will honour fallen Saskatchewan soldier

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