Mr. Speaker, like the right hon. member for Kings—Hants and the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, I too had the honour of serving in the House with the honourable Marcel Lambert in the latter five years of his parliamentary career. I consider myself fortunate to have been in that position.
I want to join with others who have already spoken and who have portrayed very well the details of Mr. Lambert's career as a parliamentarian, his service as a soldier, his sensitivity to his constituents and his care for others as reflected in the way in which his constituents repeatedly re-elected him.
I think particularly of his service as a soldier and his capture at Dieppe. If his family might permit me, we see him as a symbol of a generation of young men who were in military service at the beginning of the war and who therefore suffered in ways that not everyone did by being in places like Hong Kong and, in this particular case, Dieppe, and who therefore had the misfortune and the tragedy of becoming prisoners of war.
Time is taking its toll on their generation and so, through my salute to Marcel Lambert, I also want to salute that entire generation of Canadians.
I also want to salute his work as a Speaker and the fact that in the House of Commons one of the special ways in which a member of parliament can be honoured is to be selected as Speaker, or in those days, appointed as Speaker, but clearly governments appointed people whom they thought would have the respect of the House of Commons and the confidence of both sides of the House. Mr. Lambert fell into that category.
For all these things we give thanks. We honour his life and work. We honour his memory and we express our condolences to his family.