Apparently not. They don't know what they missed.
Finally, here's the why. Here you'll see a list of objectives. I'm going to cover them all in a little bit more detail in a minute.
First of all is fielding a first-class contingent. It allows us to showcase the Canadian Forces to an international audience. We are in fact ambassadors for Canada there among a very grateful and gracious host nation. We meet with a lot of local people and we get to meet a lot of our counterparts in the other military contingents.
Second is ensuring successful completion by all the marchers. This is a very tough physical, mental, and emotional challenge.
The only way to be successful is to train for it, so we teach our members that by training and working together as a team, they can overcome any obstacle. I think Sergeant MacIntyre will talk a bit more about that later from his perspective.
This enhances the relationship with the Netherlands, which is again a very special relationship. There will be more on that in a few moments.
Commemoration is a key part of our visit to the Netherlands. We have this beautiful ceremony at Vimy Ridge. We also honoured the dead in Groesbeek cemetery. In the past year, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, our folks were allowed to visit the Menin Gate for the last post ceremony there.
I mentioned enhancing the partnership with Veterans Affairs, and engaging with VIP marchers and visitors again to familiarize them with who our Canadian Forces are and what we do.
Finally as a complementary add-on in 2012, we decided to bring a team from our Soldier On program. It had not been done before, and in fact we're the only country that's had an entire team of recovering ill and injured guys complete the march as a team. That was a great compliment on their road to recovery. Sergeant MacIntyre will talk more about that in a minute.
I'll do a quick summary of each of those objectives along with some photos, starting with “A First Class Canadian Contingent”. At the top left you can see our Chief of the Defence Staff Tom Lawson inspecting the troops at the War Museum during our send-off parade. His comment to me afterwards was that he didn't see very much extra weight on any of those folks. Marching many hours every week certainly has benefits in terms of weight loss and maintenance of very good physical fitness.
In the lower left you can see me and MP Lizon on the dais. Each morning as all the contingents leave the camp, they give an official salute. We were on the dais receiving that salute. It's really the kickoff of the day. We had a very specific Canadian way of kicking things off. The whole camp heard us when we left. I'll talk about that at the end of the presentation.
In the lower right you can see the Soldier On team proudly holding a combat boot in a glass case. That was the award for the team that embodied the spirit of Nijmegen. For very good reasons, as you'll hear, that team certainly impressed all of us.
In the top right you can see one of the teams returning to the camp. We always pay compliments to the guards at the camp who are our hosts, so that's what the salute there is about.
What does success look like? As I said, at the end of day four, we stop on the edge of town. We drop our packs. We change at least our uniform shirts so we have a fresh uniform. We put on our berets. We hold a medal ceremony at which each of the teams is presented with its individual medals for successful completion and a team medal if it has completed it.
I want you to have a closer look at the medal. You'll find that people march for different reasons. One of the reasons is certainly the medal, which is a tangible sign of their success. The other part of the success is the—