Highway of Heroes in Pictures

From a powerpoint presentation making the rounds.

Arrival of first Soldier

Honour Guard claiming the body

Procession Leaves Trenton for Toronto

Trenton pays its respects

Firemen honouring the procession

Police Stop to Honour Heroes

One of 50 Overpasses where people gather to salute Heroes

Greetiing our Heroes

Another overpass, another tribute

Not just on overpasses do people show respect

Oshawa greets the procession

Durham Police honour procession

Ajax says thank you

An individual shows his respect.

The Final Salute in Toronto before arriving at the coroners office.

Highway of Heroes-The people say Thank You!

I recently received a great powerpoint presentation showing how we as Canadians have made the Highway of Heroes an important element in our honouring and paying tribute to our fallen soldiers.  The average Canadian was not fully aware of the sacrifices that our military have made until Afghanistan.  The governments of the day had no use for a military but time and circumstances proved this neglect to be horribly wrong.  I served in the RCHA in the early 70’s and it was a joke, we had a regimental strength of around 176 men when it should have been over 1,100 yet we had the same roles and responsibilities of a full regiment.  We were part of the A.C.E. Mobile Force for Norway and also member of the C.A.S.T. Combat Group which was responsible for re-enforcing ACE.  In other words, we were supposedly replacing ourselves which would have been  a bit difficult since we’d have been dead or wounded to require re-enforcement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afghanistan has brought respectability for the Canadian Military and a sense of pride for the people of Canada.  It was public pressure that brought about the designation of the stretch of Highway 401 from Trenton to Toronto to be known as the Highway of Heroes.  For it is along that path that our fallen are repatriated to Canada and transported to the Ontario Coroner prior to being returning the remains to the families.  The people have spoken and speak everytime we lose a combatant.  As of today we have lost 116 service personnel both men and women.  We honour their ultimate sacrifice and pay tribute to the family members who have lost their loved ones.

Members of Fire Station 44 in Barrhaven salute returning fallen soldier Cpl. Kenneth Chad O'Quinn on the Fallowfield-Strandherd Bridge just outside of Barrhaven, Wednesday, March 25, 2009. Viewer photo submitted by: Kellie Jennifer Adams

Ottawa is home to the National Military Cemetery at Beechwood and many families are choosing to bury their fallen loved ones there.  It is a beautiful place for a cemetery.  Now the Ottawa Fire Department has chosen to follow the lead of the Highway of Heroes and they provide firefighters and police officers along 12 overpasses of  Highway 416 and 417 on the route to Beechwood where the soldier will be interred.  District Chief Dave Capstick said firefighters will make the effort to show the respect and solidarity they deserve. 

The U.S. has adopted a similar policy to Canada’s on repatriation and finally make it possible to show the flag draped coffins if the families allow it.  That gives the ordinary people the opportunity to sit up, take notice and show their apprciation and sorry for the fallen.  A recent movie on HBO called “Taking Chance” is based upon  A personal narrative by Lieutenant Colonel Michael R. Strobl (you can read his story here). 

The Highway of Heroes and the actions encountered by LCol Strobl show that the people understand and want to honour the fallen who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Lest We Forget

Fox Program Red Eye – The Ugliest Americans

Canada has just suffered the loss of 4 more soldiers in Afghanistan and they will be repatirated today and travel the Highway of Heros.  So we now have to put up with ugly stupid Americans who have demonstrated why they are hated around the world.  The Fox program Red Eye chose to mock Canada’s efforts in Afghanistan not even knowing that we have been there from the beginning of this mission.  We are one of the few countries that answered the call for combat troops who would engage in combat and these idiot Americans have no understanding of their neighbour to the north.  They have no concept of the importance that Canada is to the success and prosperity of America.  After 7 years of conflict, most of the equipment is wearing out, um, I seem to remember reading about the US having equipment problems having a large percentage of its equipment worn out sitting awaiting action in Iraq.

See for yourself:

In this video, these people demonstrate how narrow minded and ill-informed they are about anything outside their borders.  They represent the last 8 years where America damaged its standing in the world.  No longer could America legitimately claim that they believe in freedom, liberty and integrity.  They set up the Guantánamo Bay detention where they were sheltered from their own laws and conducted torture and numerous human rights violations.   There was no due process – so much for the fair minded America.

The current world financial crisis can be laid at the feet of greedy people who ignored what few rules there were and managed to bring down the worlds economies. 

We can hope that theirs is a radical minority viewpoint.  If it is mainstream then America will have to continue to bully the worlds countries and use military force to impose its will.  We all know this works, just look at Iraq.

Their comments are disgusting and they would call for an invasion should someone else say things like that about America, oh wait they did call for an invasion of Canada and those silly Canadians.

Canada unveils a new, top medal for battlefield bravery

This is our newest top military honour and it is perfectly tied to the past and still represents Canada. This article is from CP. In the second image, the clasp represents a second award.  Queen Victoria’s original award was a hand crocheted scarf made by the Queen herself although not considered to be equivalent to the VC, a total of 8 scarves were awarded.

Canada had at least one recipient of the scarf, Private RR Thompson of the RCR was awarded  the Queen’s Scarf for bravery during the South African Campaign.

“By John Ward, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA – What’s old is new again as a link with Canada’s military past and a symbol for the future was resurrected Friday when the Canadian Victoria Cross was officially unveiled.

The new decoration, formally unveiled by Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean, is almost identical to the original Victoria Cross. It has been modified slightly by adding fleurs de lis to thistle, shamrock and rose and changing the original English inscription to a Latin motto, Pro Valore. It retains its frowning lion and the royal crown.

It replaces a medal which for more than a century was the top bravery award available to soldiers, sailors and aircrew of the Commonwealth.

The medal, or VC, is a modest little thing about the size of a matchbook, a bronze cross with a brownish patina hanging from a bit of crimson ribbon. But it is the highest honour Canada can bestow for heroism in battle and even takes precedence over the top level of the Order of Canada.

The VC was instituted by Queen Victoria in 1856 as a way to mark exceptional courage in the face of the enemy and was the first such medal available to all ranks, from private to general.

It is said that when she was shown the first version of the cross, bearing the inscription, For the Brave, she rejected it, saying: “All my soldiers are brave.”

The motto was amended to read: “For Valour.”

The VC had been in abeyance for a generation, as Canada worked out its own system of honours and bravery decorations. In the end, though, it was decided that the historical links were too strong to be broken completely and so a Canadianized cross was born.

“Canada wanted its own Victoria Cross, a cross that would still resemble the British cross but would better reflect who we are,” the Governor General said.

The links to the past remain even in the metal used to cast it.

Since 1914, British and Commonwealth VCs have been made from pieces of two old cannon captured in some long-forgotten war.

When Natural Resources Canada was creating a unique metal for the VC, it took a piece of this gunmetal, along with a copper medallion struck in 1867 to mark Confederation, plus native copper and other metals from across Canada and melted them into a special alloy, a sort of “tinny brass,” one metallurgist called it.

The smelt produced 65 kilograms of ingots, which were locked away and which will provide the raw material for the cross for centuries.

“I think it was important historically to keep the richness of the mystique of the decoration by keeping the historical link in the metal itself,” said air force Capt. Carl Gauthier of the Defence Department’s honours branch.

“It keeps that link to those Canadians that came before us wearing the uniform, yet it is a medal for the Canadian military of today and tomorrow.”

John Dutrizac of Natural Resources helped oversee the creation of the alloy and the casting of 20 of the new crosses. It was a tricky job, using a “lost wax” technique that dates back thousands of years.

“The casting of the thin section of the Victoria Cross is a challenge,” he said. “There’s a large reject rate where you don’t get complete filling of all the fine detail . . . you have to cast more blanks than you really expect.”

The cross is only awarded for the most conspicuous bravery, or a pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice in the presence of an enemy.

Of the 1,353 crosses ( and three bars given repeat winners) awarded since 1856, 81 went to members of the Canadian military. About a dozen others went to Canadians serving in the British forces or to people who later moved to Canada.

One of the very first was awarded to Alexander Dunn of Toronto, who was honoured for his actions with a British cavalry regiment in the famous 1856 charge of the Light Brigade.

The last Canadian to win the VC was Hampton Gray, a Canadian navy pilot honoured posthumously after sinking a Japanese destroyer in the dying days of the Second World War.

The last surviving Canadian holder of the VC, Ernest (Smokey) Smith, died in 2005.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the heroes of the Victoria Cross “enshrined the reputation of the Canadian soldier as second to none.”

He also noted that Canadian troops are once again risking their lives abroad and one of them will likely end up wearing the decoration.

“We rarely hear about their everyday heroics, but some day, somewhere, one of those men and women will do something so brave, so gallant, so exceptional that we will hear about it and he or she will join the legendary group of Canadian forces who wear the pride of a nation on their chest.”"