Brad Coulbeck is in Jerusalem, and he’s hoping to provide non-fiction books for other Canadians who have been deployed there.
Coulbeck says Canadians have a gathering place called the Canada House, and it has a few bookshelves that he hopes to fill with books about the conflict, culture, and history of the Middle East.
“[Canada House] is basically a big hotel suite that is a gathering place for all the Canadians that are here. We get together for meetings and events. There are some book shelves with some novels, but I thought we should have non-fiction books about the Arab-Israeli conflict and about the history and geography of the area”, Coulbeck says.
Coulbeck says his journey to the Middle East started here in Chatham-Kent.
“I’m normally the Detachment Commander of the Ontario Provincial Police in Chatham. The OPP support UN missions overseas, so there are members of the OPP serving in places like Haiti, Ukraine, and Cambodia”, Coulbeck says.
He’s on a mission for the next year.
“This is one of the missions [the OPP] supports. I applied for it and was successful. It’s called Operation Proteus and it’s a capacity-building mission in the West Bank helping the Palestinian Security Forces reach higher levels of transparency and professionalism in providing security and safety for their people”, explains Coulbeck.
He’s raising money to buy books for the library. Donations can be brought to Book Brothers in Chatham, or to Maureen Geddes who can be contacted at maureengeddes@geddesglobal.ca.
