06.27.2018 12:20 PM

What’s amazing isn’t that Doug Ford is doing this

…what’s amazing is that Kathleen Wynne didn’t do it when she could’ve.

(And, before any trolls take a shot at my friend Dalton, remember this.)

Premier-Designate Doug Ford will build Memorial to Honour Canadian Heroes of the War in Afghanistan

TORONTO — Premier-Designate Doug Ford today committed to building Ontario’s first provincial public memorial to honour Canadian heroes of the war in Afghanistan.

Ford made this announcement while addressing a joint Federal-Provincial-Territorial meeting with the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.

“A new generation of heroes, who fought bravely against the terrorists of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, walk among us,” said Ford. “Too many of those heroes are struggling with the scars of their sacrifice. As a province and as a country, we must always remember the 159 Canadians who never returned from Afghanistan.”

Ford announced that he intends to locate the Memorial to the Canadian Heroes of the War in Afghanistan within the legislative precinct at Queen’s Park. Additional details about the cost, the design and the timeline for completion will be shared with MPPs during an upcoming sitting of the legislature.

“Supporting our troops and our military families should unite all Canadians,” said Ford. “This memorial will send a clear message about the sacrifices our fellow Canadians made to protect our values and our freedoms, lest we forget.”

6 Comments

  1. S Willis says:

    Finally a Premier who is an honest patriot! This is the right thing to do and long overdue.

    Thank you to all who have served, in particulat to those who have paid the ultimate price, as well as to those who are actively serving.

  2. Lou says:

    While there are many that did not agree, respect should still be there. Ford gets it. Wynne never did.

  3. crabby says:

    Coming from what some would call a “military family” with ample experience in death and severe wounds in Canada’s wars, I’m skeptical about empty gestures of veneration.

    What did we do in Afghanistan that protected “our values and our freedoms”? A memorial is a great way to attach ersatz meaning to what were essentially pointless deaths. What did we achieve? Who did we benefit? How did we transform Afghanistan?

    We squandered these lives freely given. That’s not on them. That’s entirely on us, our political and our military leadership. We went there with a force of 2,500, combat troops and support personnel. A province the size and population of Kandahar needed a force many times larger.

    So small were our numbers that we became a garrison force, retreating behind the wire at night. The French proved in Algeria and again in Viet Nam that was a formula for defeat.

    I know from personal experience that we’re all too pleased to build memorials that far outlast the concern we have for the survivors, the walking wounded and the widows and orphans left behind. Memorials do those people and the loved ones they lost not a bit of good. They’re for people like Doug Ford.

  4. Geoffrey says:

    I absolutely agree that our soldiers and people who served in Afghanistan and serve anywhere should be remembered and acknowledged. A monument in Toronto, seen by a relatively small number of people, is insufficient and as another commenter said it is done more to promote those who put them up than to help those it is meant to acknowledge.

    We will almost certainly find out that this Doug Ford memorial will cost millions and take hundreds or thousands of hours to plan and implement. Why not take all of that money and effort and help at least a few more veterans directly and use modern technology to acknowledge them and create awareness for all to see. Doug Ford needs to realize that Toronto is not the centre of the world and his monument will not reach most of the public and hence do very little if any good.

    Thank you to all who serve our country.

  5. Robert White says:

    My grandfather lost his leg in France during the First World War. When he was injured his comrades took him to a French farmhouse in the countryside that his was injured in. They told the French farm family that they would kill the entire family if they did not take care of my injured grandfather whilst they were planning to come back for him. The French farm family gave him wine all night to ameliorate the pain. The next day he was retrieved and sent to hospital. Eventually he made it back to Toronto, and the rest is history.

    War?

    What is it good for?

    Bankers.

    RW

  6. Marion Vermeersch says:

    I, too, am grateful to all those who serve, and have served in the past wars to protect Canada and the freedoms and rights we often take for granted. However, many of us military-associated people, often living here for decades, have lost those rights when we had our citizenship stripped, without even a notice or hearing. My family, parents a Sgt with the Royal Canadian Artillery in WWII and his British War Bride, my brother a veteran of the Canadian Navy and a police force, and I (now retired, worked 50 years) came to Dad’s home in Ontario at the end of WWII, via a War Bride ship in 1946. Complete shock when citizenship was stripped in 2004-5. They insisted there were no Canadian citizens until 1947, you had to be domiciled within the country for 5 years before that, and furthermore, we were born abroad (couldn’t help that, it was wartime).
    So much for the Conservatives and respect for our veterans, in war and peacetime. And, to this date, my brother and I have been without citizenship for almost 14 years. My father originally came as a Home Child from Scotland, worked on farms then went back to serve Canada in WWII. Dad, my uncles and other relatives and friends were there at Dieppe, D-Day and the Liberation, grandfathers lost in the carnage of WWI. How dare those politicians say that, because it was before 1947 (and other reasons equally inane) that those people could not have qualified for Canadian citizenship. Rather than memorials and speeches, I would rather see them properly acknowledged in history as the Canadians they indeed were.

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