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Brookman: Let's remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice for Canada

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There are quite a few of us around who can still clearly remember where we were when we learned that U.S. President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated and there is hardly a school child in North America who does not know about the loss of Christa McAuliffe, the dynamic school teacher who was aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger when it blew up after takeoff.

There are others, of course, and their names need only the smallest comment or reminder to bring back their stories to us. In Canada, we still learn about the execution of Louis Riel during the Riel Rebellion and the assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, who was one of the Fathers of Confederation and was assassinated in Ottawa in 1868. Both Riel and McGee are remembered in the names of schools, monuments and various other memorials across the nation.

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I mention these few individuals because this is the time of the year when we are asked to remember those 120,000 Canadians who gave up their lives during the First and  Second World Wars and other conflicts that Canada has been involved in over our 154-year history as a country. Canada has always had a proud military history and to quote one of our past prime ministers, “Canada was never a nation that left for the washroom when the bill arrived.” We have always done more than our fair share and to this day we have a military that all Canadians should be proud of, in spite of penny-pinching by governments and an equipment procurement procedure that at times is almost an embarrassment to all of us or at least it should be.

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However, my comments are not intended to criticize the government, but rather to try to salute those many young men and women who gave up their lives in battle to preserve the way of life that too many of us today take for granted.

If you have had the opportunity to tour the Netherlands, you will have seen the small monuments scattered around the country that list the names of Canadians who died at that spot. The monuments almost all have a Maple Leaf carved into their tops, and the names of these mostly young people are preserved there for all time. The people of the Netherlands have never forgotten the sacrifices made by Canadians to restore that proud country to democracy and to force out the Nazi scourge that had gripped their land for six years.

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All of that is to praise what I think is one of the finest memorial projects in Canada and to encourage anyone to visit, with your children and grandchildren, the Field of Crosses on Memorial Drive. To walk the rows and see the names and the ages of the individuals who are remembered there is to truly bring home the fact that these people as young as 18 died in what can only be described as horrific conditions while fighting to preserve our way of life and our democracy. Their names will never be remembered the way that we remember some of the individuals throughout history, but just to see those names written on the 3,608 crosses in the field and to pause for a moment to try and imagine the rest of their stories. These people were young, they had futures, they had families who loved them and they did what they thought was the right thing to do.

It is wonderful to see the volunteer support that the Field of Crosses receives in Calgary. It is great to see some outstanding companies supporting this project along with service clubs like Rotary Club and the Kinsmen. Mount Royal University, which has lost 30 students to war since 1910, has started a Field of Crosses for those individuals and in Kelowna, they have started their own Field of Crosses.

As Murray McCann, who was the creator of the Field of Crosses, likes to say on many occasions, “We will remember them.”

George H. Brookman is chairman and company ambassador for WCD Ltd.

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