# Pizza For Afghanistan



## Spr.Earl (9 Nov 2003)

Boston Pizza makes delivery -- to Afghanistan
Canadian soldiers in Kabul to get a taste of home with company‘s goodwill gesture of a Remembrance Day feast

Michael McCullough   
Vancouver Sun  


Friday, November 07, 2003




It‘s been a longer haul than your average pizza delivery, but Boston Pizza is on track to deliver 2,200 medium pizzas more than 10,000 kilometres to just about every Canadian soldier in Afghanistan next Tuesday.

A shipment of frozen ingredients left Canada on Oct. 31 and arrived in Kabul Nov. 2, and with the help of some culinary savvy from the Richmond-based restaurateur will form the basis of a Remembrance Day feast.

The journey really started in September, when Boston Pizza executive vice-president Mike Cyr got an e-mail from his brother, Corporal Patrick Cyr, an army transport driver stationed at Canadian Forces Base in Petawawa, Ont., who had shipped out a month earlier for a six-month tour of duty in the Afghan capital.

"We were e-mailing back and forth and he said, ‘You know, it‘s the little things you miss about home. How about a pizza?‘ It was an offhand thing, a joke between two brothers," Cyr said.

"After I thought about it for a few minutes I thought, ‘You know what? If we could make this happen that would be a great opportunity to give the troops a little taste of home.‘ "

The hard part was making it happen.

Cyr enlisted Boston Pizza‘s vice-president of food service Doug MacDonald and director of purchasing Ted Duck to investigate the logistics from the restaurant chain‘s end.

He told his brother he could get frozen pizza shells and toppings to a military base in Canada if the military could get it to Afghanistan.

The military brass in Kabul liked the idea, and entrusted the mission to Major Keith Rudderham. Finally Cyr enlisted Sysco Corp., Boston Pizza‘s food distributor, to assemble, pack and ship the ingredients.

Though the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan numbers approximately 1,930, the organizers opted to send ingredients for 2,200 pies, so as to account for spoilage and a baking test by cooks at the Canadian forces‘ two camps there.

The pizza shells and boxes of toppings for Boston Pizza‘s pepperoni, barbecue chicken and Great White North (mozzarella, cheddar and ham) pizzas were loaded on to five pallets at Sysco‘s refrigerated warehouse in Kingston, Ont., on Oct. 29.

From there they were trucked to Canadian Forces Base-Trenton, placed in one of the refrigerated containers the army uses to transport food and loaded on to an Antonov 124 transport plane.

So-called "sustainment flights" run every week between Trenton, Ont. and Kabul, explained department of national defence spokesman Captain Darren Steele.

Food usually forms a big part of the cargo, due to the scarcity and/or unreliability of supplies in the markets of Kabul.

"It is a very austere environment from the point of view of living conditions," Steele said.

The flights run either west or east around the world, stopping for refueling or to supply other Canadian military operations, he added. A plane flying east from Trenton, for example, might stop at Gander, Nfld., and Bosnia before continuing on to Kabul.

Whichever way it went, the Halloween departure was confirmed as arriving safely in Kabul last Sunday, Steele said.

Meanwhile Matt Hogue, Boston Pizza‘s executive chef, sent detailed directions to the mess officers at camps Julien and Warehouse in Kabul. The cooks plan to test the recipe over the weekend before preparing a big meal to follow Remembrance Day parade ceremonies on Nov. 11.

"There will also be troops out in the field, so we actually sent a supply of pizza boxes as well," Cyr said. Units on patrol may be surprised to find a Jeep pull up with a box of fresh-cooked pizza all the way from home.

Though he oversees marketing operations at the 175-restaurant chain, Cyr has no plans to capitalize on the round-the-world pizza delivery in its marketing -- a la Tim Horton‘s, which earlier this year aired a television commercial about a case of coffee it sent to homesick Canadian university students in Scotland.

"This is something we did for goodwill purposes," he said. "I can‘t think of a more deserving group to benefit from something like this. Patrick has sent me pictures of what it‘s like over there. ... Until you see what conditions are really like you don‘t realize the sacrifices that soldiers, men and women, make."

As much as pizza will be a treat for the troops, the gesture of support from people back home means even more, Steele said.

"It‘s something I‘m sure will be appreciated by all the troops," he said.

Given the logistical challenges, will the pizzas taste as good as they would at a restaurant in Canada?

"I imagine -- that far from home and everything else -- probably even better," Steele said.

© Copyright 2003 Vancouver Sun


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## cheechue (10 Nov 2003)

Pizza always cheers me up so I hope it will be a boost for those in Afghanistan. Very nice of Boston Pizza to do that.


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## Gibson (10 Nov 2003)

> Units on patrol may be surprised to find a Jeep pull up with a box of fresh-cooked pizza all the way from home.


Ok, who hasn‘t day dreamed about this?


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## mattoigta (10 Nov 2003)

dream no more gibson, at meaford you can get pizza delivered to a grid ref.


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## Armymedic (12 Nov 2003)

We here in Bosnia are a little annoyed with this story..
While all of the people I talked to agreed that the guys on Op Athena definately deserve to get pizza, we are a bit put back that they can have it delivers in less then 10 days on a sustainment flight. 
The reason I am not happy is that the CF can send pizza in a week to Afghanistan, but its taking us 2-4 weeks to get mail back and forth from home. People have been waiting 4-5 weeks for parcels. Some have not even recieved stuff they sent themselves from Home before they left in End Sept (CCTFBH commander told us it took him 4 weeks to get stuf, so its not a rank issue either..)
And supplies, ie medical and vehical stuff is not being resupped as fast as it was either....

But no matter if your in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Africa or where ever far from home, mail is still the best morale booster.....


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## Spr.Earl (12 Nov 2003)

ArmyMedic I hear you I was Roto 0 with nothing for the first few month‘s!!Oh yeh we got bag‘s of Stale Chip‘s,Stale Chocklat Bar‘s,Stale old Smoke‘s!!That was a big pee off STALE SMOKE‘S!!!
Mail you get Mail!!!?
Just before I came home I got my mail from my wife that she sent in the Feb and I got it in June!!!!Roto 0 was a total cock up for mail for all of all trade‘s!!
Some guy‘s got reguler mail while other‘s got non but thier families sent them care package‘s and card‘s.


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## elscotto937 (12 Nov 2003)

Makes it hard to believe that we‘re not second class citizens in Bosnia...


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## Fishbone Jones (12 Nov 2003)

The mail situation is the same here in Afghanistan. It can take anywhere up to six weeks to get a letter or parcel in or out, sometimes longer. If you mail a letter through the German Bundespost(like Canada Post, but caring and efficient) at Warehouse, your letter will go to Germany then to your door in Canada in about a week and a half. We‘re still shipping in needed materials and there‘s only so much space. It‘s not a great clandestine plot on the part of the military to make life hard on the troops. It‘s a failing of the gov‘t to supply the needed equipment and manpower to sustain the ops. Two sustainment flights x broken aircraft x crew shortages x indirect flights with numerous stops = long waits. You live with it. You don‘t have to like it, but you can‘t change it. When Corporate Canada provides a photo op and press coverage that puts the liberal lapdogs of power in a good light, you can be sure our ponsy potentates will fall all over themselves and spare no expense to show that they are doing their part. It was nice to see the pizza, my one burnt slice was truly uplifting . Kudos to the people at home that tried to make things a little more comfortable for the troops and thank you Boston Pizza.


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## Armymedic (13 Nov 2003)

Recceguy, 
Read you loud and clear...

Good PR points for DND in Ottawa, just bring to light what kind of real support we are getting....maybe they could free up a new Challanger jet for our mail. Oh yeah, they hired a Ukrainian plane for the pizza, didn‘t they.

Oh, did I mention we still haven‘t got our deployment issue of CADPAT (4th set) yet....


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## Spr.Earl (16 Nov 2003)

> Originally posted by recceguy:
> [QB] The mail situation is the same here in Afghanistan. It can take anywhere up to six weeks to get a letter or parcel in or out, sometimes longer. If you mail a letter through the German Bundespost(like Canada Post, but caring and efficient) at Warehouse, your letter will go to Germany then to your door in Canada in about a week and a half.


Pretty sad state of affair‘s after all these year‘s over seas we still can‘t get mail in a timely fashion   .Even back in 96/97 it took up to six week‘s or more to receive your mail, and it‘s still happening?!!!That‘s a discrace!!!

I get mail from my Relies in the U.K. just on 5 day‘s but it take‘s nearly a week to mail a letter accross town!


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