Tuesday, February 19, 2008 @ 7:30pm FREE
Robert Gill Theatre
(214 College St., St. George entrance, 3rd floor)

When Canadian soldier Fred Doucette was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a UN peacekeeper in 1995, he had a premonition that this tour of duty would be different. He had been posted to Cyprus in the 1970s and 1980s, but the horrors of the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s were beyond imagining.

Doucette takes us to the heart of the conflict as the Bosnian Serb forces launch a massive, concerted assault. Sarajevo, the largely Muslim Bosnian capital, is devastated. Thousands of Sarajevans perish. UN forces, tasked with imposing and maintaining peace between the warring forces, realize this is an impossible task.

Upon his return to Canada, Doucette begins his own war with post-traumatic stress disorder. Nightmares and flashbacks plague his days and nights. Traumatized and disoriented, he must learn to face himself, his family and his army once again.

With raw emotion, Empty Casing tells the story of the making and unmaking of a soldier, and the growth of a man.

Frederick Joseph Doucette joined the Canadian Army Militia in 1968, and was posted to the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment as an Infantryman in 1970. After already more than twenty-five years of loyal service to the Canadian Army, Doucette was posted to Sarajevo, Bosnia in 1995, where he served as a Military Observer for the United Nations.

In the summer of 2000, Doucette was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by multiple operations experiences dating as far back as his first United Nations tour in 1973. Since being released from the military in 2002, he has been working with the Department of National Defense/Veterans Affairs Operational Stress Injury Social Support Program as the Peer Support Coordinator, providing peer support to Armed Forces personnel and veterans suffering from PTSD.

Doucette is currently active with the Royal Canadian Regiment Association, the Royal Canadian Legion, the Blue Helmets Peacekeepers, and the United Services Institute.

Fred Doucette won second prize for non-fiction in the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick’s 2001 literary competition for his Memoirs of Sarajevo. He lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where he enjoys family life, woodworking, writing and traveling.

Special thanks to our sponsors

and the
Peace and Conflict Society, University of Toronto.