Last Saturday night, during a fundraising event at the McLaughlin Armoury, in Oshawa, Ont., I met the mother of Demetrios Diplaros. Her son, a 24-year-old private in the third battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment, was killed on Dec. 5, 2008, when the armoured vehicle in which he was travelling hit an improvised explosive device near Kandahar, Afghanistan. Mrs. Diplaros and I spoke for a few minutes during the event, but mostly I just looked sympathetically into her still hurting face. As our conversation wound up, she thanked me for listening.
“I don’t know what I would have done without the support of friends and the military family,” she said, as she held on to me for dear life.