I think that the first reason is, as I explained earlier, the size of the battle and the duration of the campaign. Sicily is an island, and as a result, the campaign as such lasted only 28 days and only 26,000 Canadians participated. I say “only”, but that is still a big number. We lost 562 Canadians, but during the Second World War, a million Canadians were enlisted. Furthermore, we lost 47,000 Canadians during the Second World War. So there is a difference in the size. Nevertheless we believe that Operation Husky 2013 is important because it was this battle that really tested Canadians. We had committed an entire division and a full brigade of Canadians, an armoured brigade. For the first time, Canadians fought together after making a landing. Later on, there would be the landing in Normandy. I feel that this is quite significant. We feel that this story needs to be told.
On May 6th, 2013. See this statement in context.