Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honour to rise in this place to pay tribute to Canada's veterans. As we prepare for the launch of Veterans Week, it seems to me that a week is an insufficient amount of time to remember the many accomplishments of our veterans and the sacrifices made on Canada's behalf.
We in fact should never forget for a moment that without these gallant men and women we as a nation would not be where we are today. We enjoy a reputation throughout the world as a nation that will come to the aid of those in turmoil. This reputation has been achieved at a very high cost to those who built it.
This year the theme of Veterans Week is “Canada Remembers the Italian Campaign”. I have just returned from Italy where I had the opportunity to accompany veterans of the Italian Campaign on a pilgrimage to the cemeteries that are the resting place for 5,900 of their comrades in arms. It is sobering to see row after row of headstones with the name and unit etched on them, but it is when one sees the age of these soldiers that it impacts a person the hardest. Many never reached their 20th birthday.
Veterans continue to give to this country by going to schools and reliving their experiences so that Canadian children have at least an idea of the pain of war. It is important that we know and remember what war is all about. It gives us the incentive to keep the peace.
As we don our poppies and take our places at cenotaphs across the country this November 11, I would like to share with my colleagues and Canada an inscription I read on a headstone in Italy. It was the headstone of one young Canadian soldier and it told the story of every Canadian family that lost a loved one. It read:
To the world he was only one, to us he was the only one.