That's okay. My CO would have corrected you, for sure, but that's not my role.
Andy, thank you for recognizing Captain Casey. Jenn was a very close friend of mine. I feel her with me right now. One of the greatest honours of my life was to read the family's statement when she passed.
This would be so meaningful to her, that we're talking about educating youth. It was her daily job. She was a public affairs officer, but she also was very instrumental in the interactive programs on the ground for the Snowbirds in public education and media relations.
I'm trying to answer your question. It's hard for me to get it out because it's an emotional time. We're just one week away from the anniversary of her death, right now.
When she died she was doing Operation Inspiration and looking forward to the ways that we commemorate and at those unique things that we can do to engage youth. This is a legacy of hers.
What it inspired me to do was a program called Operation Bluenose. We asked everybody to light up blue the first weekend of the sailing of the Bluenose. It was to give everybody an opportunity just to shingle something for us all to hang on to. We had a rough go here in Nova Scotia in the last year. It was surprising to me, to see how many people.... Obviously we had the Cyclone thing. We engaged all of the families. We engaged communities. People were pulling out their blue Christmas lights and whatnot and putting them on their front deck in the middle of July.
I'm off topic a little bit. I know a lot of the witnesses here have mentioned ways to engage, whether that's through digital media or telling stories.
This will be my last comment. One thing we did during the Flanders work that I was doing was a poem exchange for In Flanders Fields between a school in Poperinge, which is very near where John McCrae's military hospital was, along with a school here in Halifax. Each class read a stanza and then they had a Q and A afterwards. Some of those kids are still in touch today.
That's a very long-winded answer to say I think there are so many ways that we can do this. But it is absolutely something that's not going to happen naturally. We have to put effort into it.
I'm so pleased to hear all of the people speaking here of the work that they're doing. I want to thank you all for your service.