There were smiling faces all around as two navy ships sailed into their home base of Halifax after being deployed to central and eastern Europe.
Melanie Farmer didn’t waste any time, proposing to her partner minutes after stepping off HMCS Montreal.
HMCS Halifax and HMCS Montreal docked around 9:30 a.m. on Friday, after their latest deployment as part of operation reassurance. The pair of ships were supporting Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 & 2, as tensions grew between Russia and the west around the invasion of Ukraine.
No sooner than the crew started walking down the jetty off HMCS Montreal, Melanie Farmer asked her partner, Isabelle Evans, to marry her.
“It’s surreal,” Evans said, still wrapped in her just-returned partner’s arms. The pair have been apart from one another for six months.
HMCS Montreal left on a scheduled deployment in January, with a 239-person crew. Meanwhile, HMCS Halifax had been set to deploy to Operation Artemis in the Middle East in April, but instead, the ship and its 253 crew members were re-assigned to Operation Reassurance in March.
“The level of alertness onboard the ships is a much higher level than it’s been in years because of the invasion in Ukraine,” said Brian Santarpia, Commander of Maritime Forces Atlantic and Joint Task Force Atlantic, who was at the dockyard to welcome the ships home.
Commander Brian Santarpia greeted the two ships at the Halifax Dockyard Friday.
Santarpia said the HMCS Halifax will be out of the water for some time, while HMCS Montreal is set to re-up and do the same mission with a different crew next year.
HMCS Kingston and Summerside left for the Baltic Sea and the North Atlantic to join Operation Reassurance in June. They’ll be on a four-month deployment supporting NATO “assurance and deterrence” measures in Europe.
This will be the first deployment on Operation Reassurance for both ships.
In June, the commanding officer of HMCS Halifax, Cmdr. Dale St. Croix, was temporarily removed from his post and subject to an investigation.
Cmdr. Paul Mountford stepped up to lead in St. Croix’s absence.
