Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat familiar with the Vimy area, in France, where, next week, we will go to gather up the remains of an unknown Canadian soldier.
A few years ago, I visited this World War I battlefield. I remember walking over the plain, which now looks so peaceful with its wheat fields and small wooded areas, in a contemplative mood but also feeling the anguish that grips us when we find ourselves in a place where thousands of men died while fighting for freedom.
“Morts pour la liberté”. These people made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. It is with reluctance that I use this expression, because I am well aware that after having been used in so many speeches and read, unfortunately, on so many tombstones, it may have lost some of its meaning and may no longer fully reflect the noble yet terrible reality that it should evoke. Still, let us try to visualize what happened.
We are close to the village of Vimy. Can we see that young man, whose remains we will bring back home? Like thousands of others he is there, alive, with his helmet, his rifle and his khaki uniform in a trench, where he is taking cover, alongside his brothers in arms.
Stunned by the din of battle, which prevents him from thinking, he shoots again and again. His rifle is hot. But in the lulls between firing, he lights a cigarette and, leaning on the muddy wall of the trench, he dreams. For the hundredth time, we can be sure, he imagines the wonderful moment when the war is ended, he has travelled back across the ocean, and the train carrying him and his buddies home finally reaches its destination.
He can picture himself already, a young soldier flush with victory, searching through the cheering crowd on the platform for the anxious faces of his mother, his father, his girlfriend or his wife, and perhaps his children, older now. “Will he be there”, they must be asking themselves. There, he has seen them. “Yes, yes, I am here”, he shouts to them, leaning out the open train window.
A whistling sound, an explosion, a blast—it must have been a shell that killed him because his remains, likely mixed in with those of other soldiers, could not be identified. A shell which shattered his dream and robbed him of his identity. But today, it is this anonymity which has earned him a place in history by conferring on him the honour of forever representing in his native land, to which he has returned after more than 80 years, all those who, like him, gave their lives for us.
Next week, the coffin of this soldier will be on view in parliament's Hall of Honour so that his fellow Canadians may pay tribute to him. I hope that many men and women will do so for, were he not back among us, they might perhaps have eventually forgotten to whom they owe their freedom. They need not be great readers of literature to help make the following two lines of verse ring as true today as when they were first written:
Those who for their country gave their lives
Should hear the prayers of many at their grave