‘It’s about all of us’: Armed Forces, veterans gather for Remembrance Day in Montreal

Under heavy snowfall, dignitaries including mayor-elect Soraya Martinez Ferrada and member of Parliament Marc Miller, who is a former infantry commander.

On Remembrance Day, Bruno Plourde said his thoughts were with a comrade he lost while the two were deployed in Afghanistan.

“We have a special place in our heart for him today,” he said Tuesday morning from Montreal’s Place du Canada. “For all the people that lost their lives — or who sometimes came back, but not whole as a person.”

The veteran spent 40 years in the Armed Forces, also deploying in the Congo and Bosnia. He and his comrade were both serving in the same regiment in Afghanistan when he was killed. Canada’s mission to that country lasted between 2001-2014.

When Remembrance Day comes around, Plourde said, it’s easy to remember those who paid the ultimate price; what’s more difficult, he said, is to keep them in mind every other day of the year.

Under heavy snowfall, the first of the season, the ceremony began just after 10:30 a.m. There was a 21-gun salute and a flyover by the 438 Tactical Helicopter Squadron, with dignitaries including mayor-elect Soraya Martinez Ferrada and member of Parliament Marc Miller, who is a former infantry commander. More than 100 people attended the ceremony.

“It’s a lot of emotion for me today,” said Vincent-Gabriel Lamarre, a corporal in the Canadian military who served in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011. “I lost maybe all of my friends from Afghanistan.”

His comrades didn’t die in the field, he said. Rather, he lost them gradually after they left the forces and “lost their minds,” he said. Others just disappeared, he said, after he lost track of them.

“This is the time of the year that I remember them,” he said, adding that he didn’t mind being out in the cold, windy weather, saying those who died serving went through so much worse.