Just speaking to that, I have no idea how many medals are out there. What I would like to see with this bill is for us to just give the same respect to our modern medals that we do to the medals that are 50 and 100 years old.
For the veteran who has these medals, they are priceless to them. They're usually not for sale. It's usually after the fact. It's like I said with George Buckingham, whose name I mentioned. When I knew him, he was a bachelor. His parents had passed on. We painted his house. He used to feed the squirrels. That's all I knew about him. I didn't know that he had medals and I didn't know of his past.
I don't know how many would be wanted by the museums. But my whole thing is my father... I noticed that on the order of business, the orders of the day, you have my name as “Gary Ralph Schellenberger”. Well, my dad is Ralph Schellenberger, and he is a veteran. He has some medals, not great medals; he doesn't have a Silver Cross or anything. But you know, there are a lot of people like my dad. He was a farm boy and was signed up and went off to war. He didn't do anything other than be part of a great army that won the war.
Even I don't know what all his medals mean. I know I will receive those medals and I know what I'm going to do with those medals. I am going to donate them to the local museum so that my father is remembered forever and ever. They will be there;they might just go into a repository someplace. Will they be out for people's view every day? Not necessarily. But usually what museums do is archive those things. They will get the particulars of how and why this person did what he did. This was a young man who went to war because there was a need and he did receive medals.
One of the medals he has is an overseas medal. He didn't receive it until about 35 years ago, because he didn't think he was ever overseas. Well, during the Second World War he was sent to Newfoundland, and at that particular time Newfoundland was not part of Canada, so he received a medal for going overseas. Is that important? I think it is, because during the time he went, either one or two trips before, a ferry sunk going to Newfoundland. He was on one either the day before or the day after, so yes, it was dangerous.
With that, I don't know how many numbers... It's not the veteran that I'm worried about. It's a niece, nephew, or a cousin somewhere down the line who might receive them and not realize what they are.