Exercise Southern Strike '96

In the late winter of 1995 Captain Laird Coghill of the 3rd Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment, based at CFB Borden, called Roberts and asked him if he was interested in handling the public affairs for Exercise Southern Strike '97. The exercise was going to be to held at Camp Blanding in Florida in the middle of March. He called Roberts because his name was on a list of potential candidates and because they had worked together before on a couple projects. Despite the deliberate obstruction of a staff officer just posted in from Ottawa, and with the help of his former Reserve boss, Major Brian Hay, who made a critical connection with The Toronto Star, a very positive full page story on the exercise was published on page A18 on March 24, 1996. The Toronto Star story, by Donovan Vincent and titled, "Reservists are vital to military", was supported with five photographs by the newspaper's senior photographer Boris Spremo.

March 24, 1996

To put this event into a historical perspective, this highly positive story was published at the height of the Somalia Inquiry, which was a truly negative period for the Canadian Forces.

Shortly after arriving at Camp Blanding, Roberts contacted the media in the closest town, Gainesville. This resulted in visits by reporters and camera operators from the Gainesville Sun and the CBS affiliate, television station WGFL-TV. He invited them to view the Canasdian soldiers conduct house clearing, known as, fighting in a built-up area. The crews were positioned with the troops to view the exercise from the soldier's perspective. Today this is called embedding. Both media outlets told him this was a first for them.

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