If you needed any assurance that Canada will remain forever strong and free, you would have received it last week on a cold, windswept highway overpass where hundreds of ordinary people gathered to pay respect to a man most had never met and an ideal they all shared.
The occasion was the repatriation of John Gallagher, a Canadian who died fighting against terrorism in the Middle East.
Chatham Mazda from Chatham Voice on Vimeo.
Gallagher died, not as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces in which he had served admirably in the past, but as a member of Kurdish resistance force, fighting ISIS, an evil group of thugs that uses religion as a guise to legitimize murder, rape, torture and enslavement of fellow human beings.
According to government protocol, Gallagher didn’t deserve full repatriation since he wasn’t an active member of the Canadian military but the public needed no formal sanction to show how it felt.
It was the Canadian mosaic in full flower. There were children, adults and senior citizens. Men and women.
People waving flags and others standing silently. From bikers to bankers and everyone in between.
Thousands more lined the streets of Blenheim.
They didn’t need pomp and circumstance.
All they needed was to know that people shouldn’t live in fear and repression, that everyone deserves the basic dignity of freedom and sometimes you have to fight for that dignity.
And pay the price.
Ironically, some social media “experts” used Gallagher’s death as justification for closing the door on any refugees.
They didn’t see the contradiction in slamming the door on those John Gallagher died for.
Thankfully, we will, as a nation, allow people terrorized beyond belief to come to Canada and begin a new life, just as virtually all of our ancestors did.
By that action, we have already defeated terrorism.
Well said …
My sincere condolences for the family of John Gallagher