Veterans Affairs Committee on May 10th, 2021

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

How old are the students who attend these presentations?

[LCol Jacques Borne]

Most of the time, they are attended by high school students.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Students of French and English high schools, is that right?

[LCol Jacques Borne]

They are attended mostly by students of French schools. I have on occasion given presentations at English schools.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Is there funding for these presentations? Does your organization pay for the presentations?

[LCol Jacques Borne]

No, we volunteer.

I am sometimes given $50 to cover my travel expenses, but I don't earn a living from it. I volunteer my time.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Borne, thank you for your commitment. You are well-known and respected in Quebec, and it's easy to see why.

Mr. Chair, I have no other questions at this time.

[LCol Jacques Borne]

Thank you, Mr. Désilets.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Your résumé is impressive, Mr. Borne.

[LCol, Ret'd) Jacques Borne (As an Individual]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much. I certainly appreciate the fact that Rambo is now going to be in Hansard. That was great.

Up next, we have MP Blaney for six minutes please.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for your testimony today, and of course, I always recognize the incredible service that you have given our country.

Mr. Smith, it's very weird not to call you Sean.

I think what we've heard today and in all the testimony is that commemoration is a process of remembering our history and also valuing the service that people have given to our country. I thank you specifically for your testimony today.

I know you've worked a lot with youth. Have you done a veteran's presentation to youth and if so, what do you do to make it memorable?

[Sean Smith]

Thank you, MP Blaney. Yes, you're right, it's weird.

I've been part of the Memory Project with Historica Canada now for several years. I quite often get invited to various schools in my area to make a presentation.

For example, I went to a middle school. I waited until all the students were in the gym, then made some quick calculations in my head. I told everybody to stand up, and I said they were the Royal Newfoundland Regiment on July 1, 5:00 a.m. Then I had them all sit down except for the first two rows and I said they were the Newfoundland Regiment on roll call, July 2. Seven hundred of the 800 men who went over the top that morning died or were wounded, and only 63 showed up the next morning for roll call. That impact, that visual, makes an impression on the students, on the teachers. Words get lost, but visuals embed a memory of that moment.

When I went to Vimy Ridge on Remembrance Day 1990, I was one of only four Canadians there. The irony is that the brigade had deployed for training to head to the Gulf War. There I stood under a memorial on Remembrance Day, and we were off to war again. That memory is embedded in me forever because I lived it. Being able to share that memory with youth makes all the difference in the world. This is why I'm so eager to make sure that kids have the ability to meet veterans like me, World War II veterans who are still with us. We have one locally, Carl, who I hope will still be alive to make that final trip to the Netherlands to be recognized for the liberation. I'd like kids to meet Carl because he is a living embodiment of a moment in our history. Nobody can tell that history like a person who has lived that history.

As Dr. Windsor mentioned, you can't talk about the Medak Pocket and expect people to understand it. You need to have somebody who was at the Medak Pocket to understand it. My buddies came back from that messed up, but they need to share that story. It's important, as you can tell.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

Sean, I'm sorry to keep pushing you.

Why do you think engaging our youth and working towards connecting them to the past will be so successful for their own futures?

[Sean Smith]

As the saying goes, those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. I don't think that sits any closer than looking at the youth today and having them not understand what that past really means.

As Mr. Windsor pointed out, there's a lot out there about World War I and World War II but not anything substantial about Bosnia or Yugoslavia. Afghanistan is front and centre because it was in the media all the time, but the individual aspects of Afghanistan are lost. They're still there. They're amongst us. They're amongst the veterans.

That's why people like Al Cameron, who has Veterans Voices, is recording all of these interviews with veterans. World War II, Korean, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Rwanda are all points in time that we still have a connection to because the people who are connected to them are still with us.

We can't look at a written word and understand the emotion that goes behind it. A guy I served with in Cyprus killed himself six months after we got back. People don't know how much of an impression that has on us until they actually have an opportunity to speak to us. I want to get to a point in our lifetime where I can go into a school on Remembrance Day to talk about something and not have some kid come up to me and ask, “Hey, did you kill anybody?” I would have never considered saying that to a veteran coming into my school when I was a kid because it was still very present in our minds.

There's a long, long road.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, Mr. Smith, for sharing that important perspective with us today.

Up next, we have, for five minutes, MP Brassard.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses today for their extremely compelling and powerful testimony.

Sean, it's okay to cry, man, because I cry all the time. This is an emotional thing for all of us sitting on this committee.

I want to pick up on Ms. Blaney's theme about youth. I was critic for Veterans Affairs during Vimy 100. I went there. I also went to Beaumont-Hamel. It's unbelievable the sacrifices that the Royal Newfoundlanders made. Of course, with regard to Vimy, we all know the story there.

It really was a life-altering experience; there's no other way to describe it. Many people who were on that trip as part of the delegation felt the same way. I said in the House at the time that, just as many pilgrimage sites exist for religious or other circumstances, whether it's the Taj Mahal or the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, I think Vimy should be Canada's pilgrimage site for young students.

I know there's a lot of engagement within high schools across the country. There were thousands and thousands of students were there. I ask, “How can we do that better?” because I think it's that important.

[Sean Smith]

The thing that really hits home with Vimy is the memorial itself and parts of that memorial. You cannot look upon that single female statue looking towards Givenchy, and not be touched by it.

If only we had some means of bringing a part of that memorial to the people—those 11,258 names that are engraved on that wall—where people could touch and feel and understand, they could see names that say so-and-so served as such-and-such because they joined at 14 and celebrated birthdays fighting at Vimy Ridge. Those are touchpoints that you cannot talk about that would get that emotion across.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

That is powerful.

Before I went, I put out on my social media feed that if anybody had a family member whose name was on that, I would take pictures of their names and email those back to them. The level of gratitude was just profound.

Sean, you're absolutely right. It's just amazing.

Mr. McMullin, I want to go to you. The Books of Remembrance were such a profound part of Parliament when they were in Centre Block and now in West Block. The name of my wife's uncle Robert John Westgate is in there. We actually sat in for the page-turning ceremony. We showed the video to my mother-in-law, and she still cries, to this day, because she remembers the day he was killed. Oftentimes during a moment of pause in Parliament, I would go down there, just to look at the books of commemoration and reflect on why it is that I have a seat in our symbol of democracy.

I want to just throw a couple of those names into the record here, Mr. McMullin, if you'll indulge me: J.T.M. Levesque, sergeant, Royal 22nd; Commander St. Jean, rifleman, Queen's Own; Private Mason, horse artillery. How simple a process should it be for these names to be put into the Book of Remembrance?

[James D. McMullin]

In the first book I produced, I showed everybody who died—from all the graveyards—and then I went to a second book and I just produced the names of the people who were left out of the Books of Remembrance. Now, in the first book I say that Veterans Affairs took it upon itself to say that you, even though you were in Germany, a long way from your parents and you were killed in a car accident, are not in the book. I'm not picking on the air force. Don't get me wrong. I was air force. An hour before you left work you serviced an aircraft. The aircraft went up in the air and crashed, and the pilot was killed. He's in the book. You're not in the book. The jobs were not exactly similar, but you were both a long way from your country. Your country sent you there. The 1950s were not a time when you said, “Oh, I don't want to go there.”

I was in Halifax in the winter of 1956. A troop train arrived from Quebec City. The provost had secured the troop train, and it went right into the station in Halifax, and they closed the station. It was too late. There was a snowstorm and there was no supper for the troops. I was stationed there. I went and knocked on the door to see the provost. I spent about three hours running back and forth to a restaurant to get these soldiers coffee. At 12:00 they marched across Pier 21 and I went back to my barracks. At 3:30 in the morning I heard the SS New York blow as it cleared Halifax. The next thing I heard, my brother was killed. I wonder—

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

To Mr. Smith's point, these are the stories we need to hear, direct from those who were there.

[James D. McMullin]

I wonder how many more people, soldiers I brought food to that night, are buried in this book, and nobody seems to care. They are the only soldiers, the only military members who left Canada. I've worked on the First World War from John Bernard Croak. I've worked on them all. How many people know that they're the only ones who were posted from Canada, know where they died and by whatever cause, and that they are not remembered? I think that's wrong.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Thank you for the time, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, Mr. Brassard.

Thank you, Mr. McMullin.

Up next for five minutes we have MP Casey.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I'd like to welcome all the witnesses. For those who have served, I thank them for their service.

Ms. MacLellan, your presentation was impressive. You've been appointed as an honorary lieutenant-colonel. I've had the honour of being able to congratulate a couple of constituents who have also received that. The calibre of people with whom you serve in that role is extremely impressive.

You talked about that and you talked about the Halifax Rifles and the commemoration. I had a look at your biography. One thing you didn't talk about, which I'd like to hear more about, is your role with the Belgian government as an in-Canada representative, and how you were able to amp up the commemoration, on their behalf, of Canadians visiting Belgium. Could you talk a bit about that and about what we as Canadians may be able to learn from your work in that regard?