Earlier this week, I happened to be on a massage table. Because my massage therapist also happens to be one of the most plugged-in and erudite people I know, she and I talked about the devastation in Haiti. To my surprise, she informed me that Uxbridge has become involved. She said that among a number of awareness-raising and fund-raising activities, the Rotary Club of Uxbridge has rallied to assist victims of last Tuesday’s earthquake. I wondered how our community – so far away from the disaster – could hope to deliver any tangible help.

“Well, there are 17 Rotary Club branches in Haiti,” she said. “That’s how local donors can be reassured donations will get there.”

That was some of the first reassuring news I’ve learned since the earthquake took place on Jan. 12. Almost since the next day, stories of victims enduring limb amputations without anesthesia, of marauding gangs stealing from homeless victims, and of orphans roaming the streets of Port-au-Prince, have haunted all of us outside this impoverished Caribbean nation.

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It happened early last spring. With just a few days remaining before I led one of my annual tours to the battlefields of Europe, I paid a visit to the man who regularly supplies me with this country’s greatest calling card.

Bryan Petry was ready and waiting for me. At his All Seasons Display office in Markham, Ont., he had three full-sized Canadian flags I planned to use as official gifts. He had bags of Canadian flag pins we would give as souvenirs to French and Belgian acquaintances, and he had bundles of paper Canadian flags we would plant in front of Canadian military headstones at Commonwealth War Grave sites.

“Plant one for me, would you?” Bryan asked me.

His request caught me a little off guard. “Of course,” I said eventually. “Anything for my favourite custodian of the flag.”

I guess I didn’t realize how telling that moment in his office really was. Though I would see Bryan Petry a few more times later that summer and into fall, his request to be remembered during one of our cemetery visits turned out to be the last favour I was able to return to him. On Monday, Bryan died of complications caused by cancer at Toronto East General Hospital. He was 54.

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The day I first saw it, I had no idea how much impact it would have on my life or the lives of several others.

I came across the photograph back in March. I had opened a copy of the Globe and Mail and spotted the image right away. I suddenly realized the picture might provide the exact image I’d been searching for. It showed a contemporary Canadian soldier in Afghanistan. He seemed to be seated inside a troop transport. He looked exhausted, done in. I checked the caption under the shot. It said:

“Master Corporal Chris Jebeaupre rests after a mission in the Taliban stronghold of Zhari district.”

All last winter I had searched for an image to place on the cover of my new book, a book I hoped might change attitudes about the way we view Canadian veterans. I wanted the image to say several things. It had to depict a veteran; clearly this man was a veteran, not of long past wars, but of a current war. It had to be an honest reflection of the aftermath of a wartime event; the Reuters news agency photographer, Stefano Rellandini, seemed to have caught this Canadian soldier in a state of exhaustion. Perhaps even loss. So I called Reuters seeking permission to use the shot on the cover of my book.

“You’ll have to call New York,” the woman at the Toronto Reuters office told me.

Once I’d made contact, I asked Reuters to forward the photo to my publisher’s cover designer to incorporate the image around the title of my new book, “Breaking the Silence.” From the first draft of his treatment, I knew that my instincts to get this photograph were right. The image of Master Cpl. JeBeaupre seemed perfect.

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As a Newfoundlander, she pointed out that back home there are two important observances on July 1.

Each year when the first day of July dawns, Shandel Leamon explained, Newfoundlanders mourn the events at Beaumont-Hamel, France, in 1916. On that July 1, as the Somme offensive began during the Great War, British generals sent hundreds of thousands of Empire soldiers over the top against an occupying German Army. In less than half an hour nearly the entire 1st Newfoundland Regiment – 658 men – became casualties.

“A span of two football fields,” Shandel Leamon explained, “took two months to take from the Germans.”

But then in the evening each July 1, the young student from Little Rapids, Newfoundland, pointed out that she and her fellow citizens celebrate joining Confederation. The island dominion formally became the 10th province of Canada on July 1, 1949. The evening therefore turns into a celebration with promenades, parties and, of course, fireworks.

I met Shandel Leamon and her co-workers – all Canadian university students in the employ of Veterans Affairs Canada – earning tuition money this summer at the Beaumont-Hamel historic site in France.

I had come 6,000 kilometres from Canada and met some of the proudest Canadians I’ll find anywhere. Wearing the VAC uniforms and full of stats, stories and history, they seemed devoted to their work.

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