This past Monday was Remembrance Day in Canada, November 11, where we remember the service of our military and especially those who died during that service. Many cities have cenotaphs or war memorials where the local citizens gather for special ceremonies, and some will put aside the thoughts that arise on such a day until the following year.
In Ontario, though, there is a constant reminder that you can spot on any day you travel along Canada’s superhighway, the 401 (“Macdonald–Cartier Freeway,” after two of our country’s founders), from Exit 362, Keele Street in Toronto, to Exit 526, Glenn Miller Road at Trenton. Every so often you might catch a glimpse of a blue sign bearing a poppy and the text “Highway of Heroes / Autoroute des Héros,” and you might wonder why that stretch of road, and no other, might get such a designation.
Exit 526 is the closest point on the 401 to Canada Forces Base Trenton, which has what amounts to a military international airport. Exit 375 is where you turn off the superhighway (16 lanes at that point) to get to the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto. It is the route taken by convoys conveying fallen Canadian solders in the last journey of their military service.
Most memorials are created by politicians, but this one (aside from its official naming) was created by the people. Ever since 2002, ordinary citizens, many with no connection to the military, would line every single overpass on that route (or its older, shorter version) to mourn and honour the dead.
Canada has a small military, but every since the battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917, it has “punched above its weight” in both armed conflicts and peacekeeping missions. When I was a teenager, it had provided 10% of all U.N peacekeeping forces to that point, in part because former prime minister Lester Pearson had been instrumental in creating peacekeeping in the first place. We might be reluctant war-fighters, but our troops do it bravely and well.
Canada’s role in Afghanistan started in October 2001, when, secretly, our elite special ops team, Joint Task Force 2, sent its snipers to aid our American allies. Regular troops joined them in January 2002, took on a larger and more dangerous role in Kandahar in 2006, and finally withdrew in 2014.
During its time in Afghanistan, Canada had the highest per-capita rate of casualties of all coalition members, and the third-highest absolute number of deaths. It wasn’t our war, and after the American withdrawal in 2023, when the Taliban took over again within about a week, the whole thing had proved pretty much pointless. But no matter how futile the war, and how intense our feelings about conflict and the people who start it, it is fitting to remember those who died serving their country with the ultimate sacrifice.
The Highway of Heroes is a quietly Canadian way to do it.
True patriot love, There was never more. — The Trews, Highway of Heroes