Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much.

Canadian Heritage committee  One of the things we do is exactly what you're doing now, and I commend the committee for calling us forward to talk about this particular campaign. I'm sure there are a number of initiatives, such as this one, and I encourage you to call witnesses, particularly Canadian historians.

Canadian Heritage committee  I hope you're there.

Canadian Heritage committee  It would have been even worse than outside, because in those days the tanks weren't like the ones I served in, the kind we have today. I'm a tanker myself, and nowadays we have air conditioning in tanks, which is really required in these hot climates. It would have been even hotter, and I dare say that everything was hot.

Canadian Heritage committee  It's a lack of interest.

Canadian Heritage committee  The Seaforth Highlanders are going to be back there to do that—the same regiment.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  When you compare it with the rest of Italy.... That was fighting up the boot. It was incredibly difficult. Sicily, as I said, is not that significant for them. So they're not doing anything specifically for Sicily.

Canadian Heritage committee  Mr. Nantel, I would like to add something about the Royal Canadian Legion. You talked about people's involvement. Certainly, we would have liked to bring over some of these veterans who fought, but the problem is that they are 90 years old, and the conditions I was talking about earlier, namely 45 degrees Celsius temperatures, the heat and so on, make it nearly impossible.

Canadian Heritage committee  Sicily was a 28-day campaign. Of course it's very important for us, because of the things I said in terms of it being the first very successful campaign of the Second World War. But when you look at it in the context of the entire war, it's tiny. By the time the war ended, we had the third largest navy in the world.

Canadian Heritage committee  I think that the first reason is, as I explained earlier, the size of the battle and the duration of the campaign. Sicily is an island, and as a result, the campaign as such lasted only 28 days and only 26,000 Canadians participated. I say “only”, but that is still a big number.

Canadian Heritage committee  I'll start and then hand it over to my friend Steve, who's been to Sicily several times. Essentially, this was not a fighting landing that they did, i.e., there was not that much great defence on the beaches and so forth, but a few days inland they started getting really heavy resistance.

Canadian Heritage committee  Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you very much. First of all, I would like to thank you for inviting us to talk to you about Operation HUSKY 2013. As a former general in the Canadian Forces, in which I served for 35 years, and as the director of studies of this jewel, the Saint-Jean Royal Military College—I have in fact circulated information documents about the college and I would invite you to read them—I feel that one of my roles is to make the future leaders of our Canadian Forces and the general public aware of the brilliant exploits of my predecessors.