While i know that there are many Americans on this board I know there are few Canadians also on the board and perhaps they will share with me this feeling of pride and sorrow. Today marks the passing of Ernest (Smoky) Smith, who was the last surviving Canadian Victoria Cross recipient, died Wednesday [August 3rd, 2005]. He was 91. While I sure anyone who is not Canadian will be going who? I sure any Canadian who ever watched Remembrance day Cover from Ottawa remembers it jolly, big glasses old man with a Stag head on his cap. for years, as long as I can remember he was there in Ottawa being the very symbol of what all Canadians who fought in World War Two had been through and had come back and built. To a large degree, Canada was Forged in the fires of the Second World War. It establishes who Canada was and what it could become. 'Smokey' Smith was a symbol of this, a larger than life hero, Worth remembering as much as any other Canadian and a reminder of what Canada put on the Line in the Last World War. I will remember with great fondness his telling of what he did to win his Victoria Cross. I sure I heard him tell it many times. He was a great man, the kind of man you find so little of in this day and age. A hero without losing the sparkle of being human. A Symbol and yet so human. Sadly, his passing is a reminder that the time of the Veterans is passing, their stories lost. For those with fathers and Grandfather who served, we must learn all we can and pass it to our children and our children's children. We are the last direct link to that war, we must pass it on. It our responsibility and our duty to the future generation of humankind. We must not let the spirit and memories of 'Smoky' Smith and hes comrades to pass into dust, into tales told in musty books that no one remembers.
Lest we forget.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050803.wsmokey03/BNStory/National/
