In the beginning, there were no uniforms, boots, kit or weapons for them, save a few well-worn leftovers from WW1. It did not matter. The men came anyway, possessed of the same spirit which had carved this country out of an unforgiving wilderness only a few generations before. From the city and the farm, from the small town, the mine and the vast wasteland of the Canadian Shield, they brought with them a unique, quiet determination to finish the job their fathers had begun only a few years before. Their Monarch and their Nation had asked them to help; they set aside the tools with which they had carved a life and a living out of a harsh world, and prepared to face an uncertain future whose only acceptable object was... Victory.

........and our soldiers marched on, first to England in 1939, and thence to hitherto unknown environs such as Hong Kong, Dieppe, Sicily, Italy and Normandy. It is not generally well known that until April 1945, a scant few weeks before the end of the war in Europe, the First Canadian Army was comprised entirely of volunteer troops. Canadian formations in both Italy and Northwest Europe who consistently fought well under strength through the balance of their wars, while hundreds of thousands of healthy, uniformed troops languished at home at the behest of a government lacking the will to impose overseas conscription. This, too, was as uniquely Canadian as was the tenacity and endurance of our fighting men themselves: the volunteers of the Canadian Army Overseas. They did this country proud, and it's unlikely their kind will ever be seen again. In their twilight years, we remember them as those whose spirits personified the best that Canada had to offer.

Our veteran Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen are aging rapidly, ladies and gentlemen. In a few short years there will be few left, and the roles of our soldiers in the Second World War will fade ingloriously into the realm of forgotten history. It's up to us to preserve their memories, and the memories of their fallen comrades;