Who we are

The Corps of Fusiliers is our community safety and well being organisation, volunteer run, that seeks to build healthy members, and aid every facet of our community in safety, freedom and happiness.

We serve under the command of the Autarian people and to allegiance of our County, our People, our Province and Country, however anybody can join our organisation if they have skills to offer. We welcome serving and former responders, military, and other servicepeople, especially if they wish to share and teach our members how to be the best at what we want to do.

In order to understand how the Fusiliers work and were formed, you also need to understand the Autarian people, and what we are about and where we come from.

THE AUTARIAN PEOPLE:

We are a group of Autistic and Neurodiverse adults and youth who seek to build community through solving the issues we face ourselves, while helping our community, across Simcoe County where we live and elsewhere, improve everyone's lives.

Autism has often been characterised as a major disability, but it's not the whole picture.

Autario is a portmanteau " AUTistic onTARIO". We believe resolutely, that this is as much our home as everyone else's, however if we want to be prosperous, we need to build not just our community, but rebuild and build our neighbours up. We crave visibility and ownership in the community, because we believe that once people see Autarians working hard, making change and doing technical and intellectual work, that the notion that Autistics are unemployable outside of a sheltered workshop would gradually fade. Every positive relationship inside or outside the community betters everyone.

We are a people who want community, friendship, culture, and happiness above all else. We know what it's like to have little to nothing of the sort, and to go through loss, grief, trauma and all the other stuff we dealt with growing up. In everything we do and how we see society, our goal is simple. Give the next generation the life we didn't have, but also be able to take part in that new life and get the happiness and belonging we wished for growing up.

Our community comes from all walks of life, but have a few things in common. We are Neurodivergent,  have a desire not just for Autarian culture-building and community belonging, but broader belonging to our communities, and our ancestors as well. We are the textbook definition of a multicultural community. An Autarian can come from any ancestry, but generally has grown up in Ontario or moved to Ontario to join an Autarian community, and is also encouraged to not just pursue Autarian cultural events and interests, but those of our ancestors as well. The food, language, dress, and heritage, we encourage and embrace, both their new Autarian culture and their ancestral one, be it Cree and French Canadian for one, or German for another, or Czech or Punjabi or Bengali. You can't have a future without a past to provide you the bricks to build it, and the same is true for culture.

This was a lengthy infodump on our history and who we wish to become, so now you can see how the Corps fits into this.

THE CORPS:

The Corps of Fusiliers was formed by our leadership, Steven Bergeron, Jeremy Andrews, Rosa Pattison and Rishav Banerjee, to allow our community to form a service that is founded on neurodiverse folks and other community members, being able to serve the community by learning all the skills that Scouts, Cadets and responders would learn, along with the outdoors skills that one would learn in the forest. The idea came about when some of them, after rough lives growing up, yearned for a brotherhood and belonging and ability to serve their communities, but found that no existing organisations offered anything beyond children-centric units. Our goal is to offer neurodiverse adults the chance to be part of this, and be part of the Autarian pioneer community as a result.

Our goal is to use these skills for community safety, welfare, inclusion and empowerment. We do this by hosting inclusive events outdoors for example, and building our units so that when the responders, be it police, fire and medics are stretched thin, we can come in to aid them, with rehab, traffic control, and other tasks that we can do, so that police officers can focus on policing and firefighters can focus on firefighting. At the same time, we wish to be the trusted source that the neurodiverse community and the Autarian community can contact for any help we can offer. This can range from being a liaison between our community and the services, organising outings, expos, and lectures and activities, and most importantly, assisting our community with matters that normally a private company or the non-emergency line would be called for, and assisting first responders in education on neurodiversity and autistic existence, and assisting them in the field when they have to come into our communities to aid one of our people.

The Fusilier Arts we'd learn would cover all facets of this role

• Community Safety

• Outdoorsmanship

• Good citizenship

• Resourcefulness

• Resilience

• Community Service

• Physical and Mental strength

• Healthy morals and interpretations of the former.

Some of our inspirations include the following, and reflect the diversity of our interests and love of culture and service

• Chaverim (Chassidim-led Jewish aid organisation. Means "Friends" in Yiddish. They offer search and rescue, unlocking of cars with keys inside them, checking on elderly parents, battery boosts, and a whole suite of other services. They deliver it with a smile on their face and don't ask for payment)

• Scouts (Based on values of good citizenship and outdoorsmanship, they have been known to create strong young people with skills many of us dreamed to've had growing up.)

• Cadets (affiliate of the Canadian Armed Forces that teaches discipline, service, and use of some tactics. We look up to them for their ability to serve the community in the time of need, and model a strong tradition of service for youth. One example most people don't know, is when the police, military and fire service have massive ceremonies and parades in Toronto and Ottawa, the Cadets and Scouts are there to offer water and light food to those marching)

• First Responder organisations (The ability to rush into a chaotic situation and know exactly what to do, and be there when people need help. We wish to be this as well, however we specialise in this ethos in our own way, as firefighers and paramedics and police can focus on their core specialisations without having to worry about ancilliaries such as traffic control. We wish to aid them in this capacity, called Rearward Lines in our parlance, as well as in the Rehabilitation of responders during emergencies, as well as being able to specifically aid any victims, ND or not, with compassion, skill and knowledge)

The relationship between the Autarians and Fusiliers is symbiotic. You can't run a rescue and aid service without people who run and need it. We have a very rich and lengthy origin story, and you can read more on our other Autarian websites.