Red Cross volunteer Nicole Beauchamp, her husband Robert, and their family have long served their community and country. Beauchamp has been with Red Cross for 20 years and spent part of her summer assisting Alberta fire evacuees, first in Edmonton in May and then again in Calgary in June and July.
She says at times evacuees came into the office distressed or crying, but by the time they left, they would feel better. “That’s my salary,” she says, “to see them going back home with a little smile on their face.”
Beauchamp is a Silver Cross Mother. She lost her son, Nicolas, a Corporal and medic with the 5
th Field Ambulance in Valcartier, Quebec, when the vehicle he was travelling in struck a roadside bomb near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in November 2007. He was 28 years old.
Beauchamp and her husband Robert also volunteer with the Army’s Peer Grief Support Group. It helps with her own grief and Beauchamp says her and Robert try to instill in others that “there’s hope even after a crisis like that, there is some hope that life still continues.” While in Calgary, Beauchamp was invited to the Calgary Stampede and a dinner at the Military Museum where she connected with other Silver Cross Mothers.
Volunteering has always been a family affair. Nicolas had been a Red Cross volunteer, and Robert has also assisted fire evacuees as a Red Cross caseworker. Last year, he was in Saskatchewan helping residents who were forced from their homes by wildfires. The couple does not travel for the Red Cross at the same time so one of them is home to take care of the family dog and house.
Beauchamp says people often ask the couple why they volunteer and their answer is always the same, “it is only to be able to help people that need help,” she says, “we feel good after helping people.” She adds, it gives them joy to help people. In the future, the couple hopes to be able to work with the Canadian Red Cross overseas.
Photos by:
Sundeep Grewal/Canadian Red Cross
Cpl. Martine Morin/Canadian Armed Forces/Canadian Press