In this commentary, AIMS Senior Fellow Brian Lee Crowley tells the story of his friend’s family who chose to come to Canada, due to the father’s positive inspirational experience with a Canadian soldier. Meeting the soldier on the street in Holland, the father thanked him for freeing them from the Nazis. The Canadian soldier smiled and said, “No need to thank me sir. We had a job to do, and we did it.” With that, the family found the country they were to live in.

Canadian soldiers have long been defending Canadian moral principles like individual freedom and democracy, at home and overseas. Canadians at home must also do our part to defend these principles. We must show the future military by our behaviour toward those who served in the past that they can face the prospect of death or grievous injury secure in the knowledge that they will not be a burden on their loved ones and that those loved ones will be generously provided for if necessary.

In Honouring Sacrifice, Crowley argues that Canadians in Ottawa and at the kitchen table must live up to the moral and practical obligations to our veterans by honouring their sacrifice and defending the principles of freedom.
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