Le major Joe Miedema prendra sa retraite des FAC en juin 2019. Un départ dans la dignité est organisé afin de souligner ses 18 années de dévouement et loyaux services envers les FAC et la Branche du génie. La cérémonie aura lieu au mess des officiers de l'AC le 24 mai 2019 de 14h30 à 16h30. Si vous avez l'intention d’y participer, veuillez confirmer votre présence auprès du major Andrew Brooks au andrew.brooks@forces.gc.ca. Veuillez également transmettre vos messages de félicitations, vos anecdotes et vos messages d’adieu au major Brooks.
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Maj Miedema joined the Canadian Army on 22 June, 2001 in Halifax Nova Scotia because his Mom told him too, and all boys know not to mess with Mom. Joe was one of the lucky ones and was able to attend a civilian university and graduated from Dalhousie with both a Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering degrees.
Joe realized early on about half way through basic training that the recruiters flat out lied to him. Not only was camping not really that fun in the Army, but he was not going to be an architect at all like he had been told, in fact an Engineer Officer was pretty much the exact opposite. Taking everything in stride, his Chimo Section Commander told Joe about all the cool things you get to do in the Engineers and he was hooked and ready to blow stuff up.
Joe finished phase training in 2007 and was posted to 4 ESR until 2012. Spending what was an amazing time at 4 ESR, he had many positions including EROC Troop Commander, Ops O and 2IC of 48, Regt Trg O, and Regt A/Ops O. It was nothing short of a brilliant time learning, growing, and having fun in the Regiment as a junior officer.
Then Capt Miedema finally got his chance to deploy on Op ATHENA Roto 11 the MTTF closeout tour in 2011 as an LO and then rolled into the TF QA/QC lead. He got to travel extensively and perhaps way too much including through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Kuwait, Cyprus Germany and even back home to Canada just in time to run the in the Canadian Army Run half with his best of his life of 1h 42m.
Joe then made the big decision while taking a Hercules back to KAF to either take a sweet job at Irving Oil, do a Masters in Robotics or Army Tech Staff. He thankfully went down the Tech route, spent a year in Kingston with his just married to wife Christianne and had an amazing time learning about Procurement, Defense Science, and even the easy spoon fed math to help the infantry guys keep up.
In 2013 Joe joined DLR and worked for two years on army simulation projects with the highlight being the conception, development, procurement and delivery of the Interim Crew Gunnery Simulators which were delivered to the Army across Canada.
Realizing you can’t or perhaps shouldn't stay on tech side too long, Joe completed AOC and then went off to be the Adjutant of 2 CER for a year in 2015. Joe and Christianne were also blessed with their first child Luke who has been a happy and health boy dead set on smashing and bashing and blowing up every toy he has, Joe could not be prouder.
Upon promotion to major, Joe had to make the toughest choice of his professional life. Accept the privilege or taking command of 26 CIED Sqn at 2 CER and fight through a growing number of physical and mental injuries, or finally start dealing with the daemons and take care of himself before it was too late. Joe chose the second option and started looking after his own health. Although Joe was posted back to DLR7 in 2016 and had a blast working on many projects including Wolf and High Risk Search Capability, he started getting medical help which has now led to his medical release after 18 years of service in June 2019.
Joe doesn’t have a big plan yet for the remainder of his career after release but he continues to get better, continues to support his growing family, and hope that in the not too distant future he can return to full time employment in the project management field of engineering to get back to doing what he loves.