According to a media release “Teal Up is a Canadian initiative which recognizes Canadian Military Children and their resiliency during Month of the Military Child. Unlike most children, military families are on the move, with children having to leave schools, activities and friends behind. Loved ones can be absent long periods of time for deployments, training and exercises. Despite all challenges, military children continue to flourish and succeed. This resilience deserves a moment of recognition to honour all children of the military community. This year, we encourage everyone to wear teal on April 27th to show military children we know they are strong and resilient.
Approximately 25 MFRC’s across Canada celebrated ‘Teal Up’ in some form last year. This will be our third year of Teal Up and we are hoping to expand even more nationally. Last year, we raised the ‘Teal Up Flag’ at the beginning of April, military children wore their ‘Teal Up’ tee-shirts and tied teal-coloured ribbons to fences as a visual recognition and solidarity. In Shilo, on ‘Teal Up Day’ military youth came together in celebration. The community participated in a show of support walk for military children, followed bya BBQ celebration. The event was accepted with excitement and enthusiasm by a crowd of approximately 600 people.
This campaign started April 2021 in Shilo, Manitoba. Shilo Military Family Resource Center Youth Programs heads Shannon Chapman (Youth Programs Coordinator)
and Stephanie Laviolette (Youth Programs Facilitator) were brainstorming new and innovative ways to celebrate Month of the Military Child. In the process, they came across “Purple Up” a popular celebration for recognizing how resilient military children are in the United States. This is what sparked the idea for Teal Up, a celebration day for Canadian military children. Both felt it was important that Canadian military children have their own day to celebrate as they should be proud to be a military child.
The colour teal was chosen because the colour includes all branches of the Military (Blue for Air Force, Green for Army and Blue/White for Navy).”
