Thursday June 23, 2011                                                                                                            

MEDIA ADVISORY

A small southern Ontario town becomes one of the Portraits of Honour National Tour’s most exclusive stops                                                                        

The Portraits of Honour National Tour will make a special stop in the small Ontario town of Bright, Ontario on Monday June 27 from 11am to 1:30pm.  The stop will include a very special memorial ceremony along with an historic appearance of Canada’s Seventh Book of Remembrance.

The special ceremony will honour our 156 Canadian Forces fallen soldiers, sailors and aircrew depicted on the 10’ x 40’ memorial mural entitled “Portraits of Honour” and will focus especially on the sacrifice of Bright native Private Tyler William Todd who was killed April 11, 2021 while on combat patrol in Afghanistan.

The ceremony will take place at 11:15am at the Bright Fire Station, where Private Todd served as a volunteer firefighter prior to his deployment to Afghanistan.

Bright may be a very small town of less than 500 people and less than a mile by a mile in size, but for Tour Organizers it represents everything that the Portraits of Honour Tour is all about:  bringing a community together to share in their loss while honouring and celebrating our Canadian Forces and their families and the thousands of troops returning home with physical and emotional injuries.

Tour Organizers, in cooperation with Veterans Affairs Canada, are making the unprecedented move to bring the Seventh Book of Remembrance from its permanent display in the Memorial Chamber of the Peace Tower in Ottawa.  Bright is one of few communities on the tour at which the Seventh Book will appear marking the first time in the history of the Canadian Parliament that it has been available for public viewing outside of the Nation’s capital.

The Seventh Book of Remembrance records the names of all those who have given their lives in military service since October 1, 1947, exclusive of those who have fallen during The Korean War, and who are commemorated in the Book of Remembrance - The Korean War.

The Portraits of Honour mural, sponsored by Kin Canada, is mounted into a specialized mobile display trailer and will travel across Canada until December visiting the hometowns of all fallen heroes and several other high profile events.  It is expected to raise over $2 million to support injured troops and the Military Families Fund.

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