BY TRISH AUDETTE, EDMONTONJOURNAL.COM
Available throughout the weekend, until sundown Monday, the book can be signed in the legislature’s rotunda.
“We’ve lost the last vet of World War I, and it’s important for all Canadians to educate ourselves about what (they went) through and what they did,” Deputy Premier Doug Horner said Friday morning.
Horner is Premier Ed Stelmach’s ministerial liaison to the Canadian Armed Forces.
“It’s a poignant moment in Canada’s history,” Horner said.
Babcock died in February at the age of 109.
In 2008, Babcock met with an Edmonton Journal reporter and photographer in his Spokane, Wash., home. He said then he did not want a state funeral upon his death. To enlist for the First World War, Babcock had lied about his age and was held in reserve. He was actually too young to see action, and so he did not feel a national ceremony in his name would be appropriate.
A state funeral recognizing the efforts of the more than 600,000 young Canadians who enlisted for the war was a different matter, however.
“I wouldn’t mind that,” he said. “I think all of them should be included”.
Friday’s events, which took place across the country, were designed to recognize the end of an era. Remembrance books were placed in government buildings in every province and territory for the public to sign.
Horner wondered aloud Friday whether many Canadians could name the battlegrounds that captured so many lives between 1914 and 1918.
“I think it’s important that we do that,” he said.
Edmonton Journal
