33 Jane Street

Mark Ford

Warrant Officer Mark Ford was born in Paris in 1960, the son of Marvin and Christine Ford. The family lived at 79 Market Street and Mark attended North Ward Public School and Paris District High School.

Mark has admitted that he attended PDHS “most days” because he was impatient to get out of school and on with his life. He did go on to attend Fanshaw College for Labour Relations and then enlisted with the Canadian Forces in September 1979. He was first sent to Cornwallis, in Nova Scotia, and then to Wainwright Alberta for basic training. From there he was posted to the 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, located in Victoria, British Columbia. In 1985, he changed regiments and became a member of the 1st Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR), stationed in London, Ontario.

The Battalion deployed to Cyprus in November of 1989, and B Company, of which Mark was a member, was responsible for patrolling the line of separation in the city of Nicosia. The island of Cyprus is claimed by both Greece and Turkey, and the job of the UN peacekeeping force was to prevent continuing violence and deaths. Canadian Forces maintained a substantial presence in Nicosia, Cyprus, as part of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) from 1964 until 1993. The large-scale Canadian peacekeeping mission, codenamed Operation Snowgoose, involved patrolling the Green Line, a buffer zone that divided the island. Twenty-eight Canadian peacekeepers died during the operation.

In the fall of 1994, 1st Battalion RCR was deployed again, this time to Croatia. This posting was during the worst of the Bosnian War, which broke out following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The war involved an international armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina between the previous ethnic members of the Yugoslavian federation. The war was characterized by ethnic cleansing, genocide, and a conflict between Croat and Bosnian and Serbian forces before the Dayton Accords in 1995 ended the conflict. 

Mark was the platoon Warrant Officer for 3 Platoon, which operated in a forward operating base. In other words, they were on the front line. The platoon’s primary role was to protect the local Croats who were on the Serbian side of the line of separation. The platoon was also assigned to patrol routes daily outside of the village. The soldiers had to notice, during their patrols, that the people caught up in this war, people on both sides, were lacking the basic requirements, especially warm clothing. So, in the true spirit of peacekeeping, during a leave back in Canada, Mark and his mother Chris organized a clothing drive at St. Paul’s United Church in Paris, reaching out to the community and collecting clothing to be sent to the UNHCA for the people in the war zone on both sides of the conflict.

The conflict ended in 1995 with the signing of the Dayton Accords, and Mark returned to Canada, where his service continued, this time in 1997 when 2 Brigade of the RCR was deployed to Manitoba during the Red River flood to assist with local emergency services. Mark was later posted to the RCR Battle School in Meaford, where he could pass on the knowledge he acquired in his various postings. He retired from the Canadian Forces in 2000.

Mark currently lives at 31 Jane Street and he is a real estate agent with Peak Realty. And it would be difficult for anyone to recognize, as Mark and his wife Heather go about their busy lives, the courage and humanity beneath the surface that Mark has shown during his military career in the face of such violence and danger. He epitomizes the role of peacekeepers, both at home in Canada and around the world.