When it happened, I figured maybe the solution was close by. I wasn’t entirely certain they could or would pitch in, but I thought I’d try to find out. I’d never really gone to them for help before, but I thought this time I would. So, I sat down and wrote a letter to township council.
“The recent rain and wind storm,” I wrote, “battered the township. And among the victims were some of our old-growth trees.”
I went on to request some assistance. (more…)
Sam helped Tyler make it through. But when he needed the same kind of assistance – nearly 100 years ago – there was no one there to help Sam through. Tyler Briley, from Port Perry, was in Ottawa last Thursday. The minister of veterans affairs was unveiling Briley’s latest creation, a wax sculpture of Sam Sharpe.
“It’s been a form of therapy,” he said. “I’ve just gotten well in the last year, in part, because of my work on this.” (more…)
I had a chance encounter with a member of the Wounded Warriors the other night. I had just completed a presentation about the battle at Vimy Ridge at the Whitby Public Library. On our way out of the library, he gave me an update on plans the group has to take about 30 younger Canadian vets on a bicycle tour of Normandy later this spring. (By the way, they’re doing it entirely on private donations. No government funding.) He recounted a recent exchange between his group and a Veterans Affairs Canada committee reviewing the needs Canada’s latest vets – those returning from Afghanistan. He was encouraging greater support for vets with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Give them time,” the VAC rep apparently said. “They’ll get over it.”