June 12, 2009

Fallen Soldier Coming Home (Trenton, Ontario)



20-year-old Private Alexandre Péloquin's body was repatriated today. He was the 119th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan.

These are images gathered during various repatriation ceremonies:



Canadian media went to court over the right to publish images of repatriation ceremonies (many countries don't allow it). Some nay-sayers say they don't care about it claiming they're against the war and the presence of Canada in Afghanistan, but you know what, fuck them. The bottom-line is that parents, spouses and kids have to watch loved ones coming back in metal boxes, and that's a tragedy.

I don't care much about Afghanistan, and if it was up to me, I wouldn't have sent our troops there, but seeing these soldiers (most of them younger than me) coming back at the Trenton base and hearing their families' weeps (that are louder than the large aircraft's engine) can't leave you indifferent.



But people care, every time veterans and other locals gather in Trenton, outside the base, to pay tribute to the fallen ones.





Even more moving is that on every bridge along the Highway of Heroes, hundreds and hundreds of people voluntarily gather to salute the soldiers and their families as they make their way from CFB Trenton to the coroner's office downtown Toronto.

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