After four months away at sea, Petty Officer (second class) Shawn Martin stepped off HMCS Ottawa on Monday to hugs from wife Kelly Western, one-year-old Madison and six-year-old Ellis.
With a week to go until Christmas, holiday music played in the background and Santa was in the crowd, but for these kids, all eyes were on Dad.
“We really missed him,” Western said. “It’s been a long one. We have got all the decorations up and we’re ready to celebrate.”
She said the kids have been beyond excited for Dad to get back. “The homecoming is big time,” she said. “The leavings are hard but the welcome homes are very exciting.”
Frequent video chats with her husband during what was his fifth deployment helped, “but it’s still been hard,” Western said.
As Madison fed him candy, Martin said the time away introduced him to many places he hadn’t seen before. “But being back is the best part, though.
“Christmas is always the best time to come home.”
Similar family welcomes played out last December at CFB Esquimalt when HMCS Winnipeg and HMCS Vancouver also returned in time for Christmas.
Vancouver was back as part of Monday’s festivities, along with MV Asterix.
Monday’s ceremonial first kiss for the returning Ottawa crew — decided by an on-board contest that raised money for charity — went to Master Sailor Seunghee Ryu, who locked lips with husband Adam Bestward before the rest of the crew made its way to waiting family and friends.
Asked about their immediate plans, Ryu said: “Babies!”
“We got married two years ago — I think it’s time,” she added with a smile.
For Petty Officer (second class) T.J. Goodhew, his deployment on HMCS Ottawa marked a turning point.
While he’s staying in the navy, he’s moving to a job that will take him to the city of Ottawa rather than back to the ship. “It’s maybe the last sail for potentially the rest of my career.”
The homecoming was special with his wife, Haley, five-year-old Milo and three-year-old Harland on the jetty to greet him, he said.
“I’m excited to do all our Christmas stuff, like go see Santa,” Haley Goodhew said.
HMCS Ottawa was one of three Royal Canadian Navy ships that left CFB Esquimalt in August, along with HMCS Vancouver and MV Asterix.
Ottawa and Vancouver are frigates that carry a CH-148 Cyclone helicopter, and Asterix is an oil-replenishment tanker — which was likened to a “floating gas station” by Rear-Adm. Christopher Robinson, Commander of Maritime Forces Pacific.
The deployment was focused on maintaining Canada’s Ind0-Pacific Strategy, intended to promote stability and deepen relationships in the Indo-Pacific region — which contains 40 countries and economies, over four billion people and six of Canada’s top-13 trading partners.
Ottawa and Vancouver’s presence, following the deployment of HMCS Montreal from Halifax in March, marks the first time Canada has had three warships in the region in a single year.
The helicopter on Ottawa had two close encounters with Chinese fighter jets on Oct. 29 while conducting routine exercises in the South China Sea, but there were no injuries and no equipment was damaged.
Jim Boutilier, a former special adviser at Maritime Forces Pacific headquarters, said such incidents between Canadian and Chinese military forces in international waters are not new.
Also during the deployment, Asterix had two people sent home after unspecified incidents. A disciplinary investigation was conducted following a separate complaint about someone making inappropriate comments toward subordinates.
Asterix docked first at CFB Esquimalt on Monday morning, followed by Ottawa and then Vancouver.
Robinson said the ships’ missions have been as diverse as supporting United Nations Security Council resolutions off North Korea to protecting the right to innocent passage in international waters.
A Christmas return is great for the crews, said Robinson, who was joined at Duntze Head by Marie-France Lalonde, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of National Defence.
“The timing’s really nice,” he said. “Although I will say the weather was a bit choppy last week between here and Hawaii, so they were experiencing five- to six-metre seas.”
Capt. Sam Patchell, Ottawa’s commander during the deployment, said his crew enjoyed a pre-Christmas dinner together in Kure, Japan in late November — complete with the naval tradition of senior crew members serving junior members.”
“We did bento boxes, some big boxes of Kentucky fried chicken, some saki,” Patchell said. “It felt like Christmas with family.
“That was honestly the high point of the entire deployment.”
He said he was happy to be back to spend the holidays with his wife, Tara Barnett, and applauded the efforts of his crew.
“It’s hard to be away from home, but when you do it together it makes it a little easier.”
