Book honours modern veterans
OTTAWA— Kelly Mirau was just 6 when his father, an air force captain, was shot down over Syria. Now, all that he remembers of his dad is taken from photos and an old home movie.
“ To be truthful, I don’t know what I remember and what’s from pictures. I was pretty young,” Mirau, 36, said of his father, Capt. Keith Mirau.
“ This was his second or third tour to Cyprus and whenever he was gone, it was for six months,” Mirau said.
Today, Mirau’s father will be remembered in another way, in the pages of a new Book of Remembrance that will take a place of honour in the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill.
This morning, Prime Minister Paul Martin and Governor General Michaëlle Jean will take part in a solemn dedication ceremony as the remembrance book is placed on an altar, joining six other books listing the names of Canada’s more than 116,000 war dead. But this book is different — it honours the country’s modernday veterans, the soldiers, sailors and air personnel killed in training exercises, peacekeeping deployments and other military duty since Oct. 1, 1947. The approximately 1,300 names are a sobering testament to the day- to- day dangers faced by military personnel.
“ Many of them gave their lives not in a war with a beginning and an end, but while standing on guard — for us, and for freedom, all over the world,” the Prime Minister said in a statement yesterday.
“ They will always be remembered . . . throughout the world, where a red Maple Leaf will signify for others, forever, what the poppy means to us: Courage, hopefulness and peace,” Martin said. On page 160 of the new book, there in delicate black scroll, is the entry “ Mirau, Keith Bradley, 424 Transport and Rescue Squadron.”
Other names in the book include Capt. Miles Selby, a Snowbird pilot killed in a training accident last December and four of the seven soldiers who have lost their lives in Canada’s dangerous — and ongoing mission — in Afghanistan. The four listed in the book were killed in the friendly- fire bombing in 2002 — Pte. Richard Green, Pte. Nathan Smith, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer and Sgt. Marc Léger. All are listed on page 213 of the book.