When I left the regular force in 2011 and
moved back to Victoria I found that I was
kind of longing and lacking to be a part of
something so I really started getting heavily
into volunteering. And then skip forward
ahead I found myself out here in Ontario and
I first like for the Highway of Heroes itself
I first noticed that there was an organization
that was looking to plant trees on the
Highway of Heroes there. So I phoned
them up and asked about what their plan
was and what their mission was all about
and I decided that I wanted to join them and
I was with the Living Tribute Campaign with
Mark Colin and I told him my story and I
said, "Look this is kind of near and dear to
my heart," because I wasn’t able to deploy
in 2008 because I suffered an eye injury
but what I would try to do was to still be
a part of the team I participated,
I was a primary pallbearer for our battalion
so I participated and conducted eight
funerals for eight guys that I knew that died.
So I told them what the highway meant to
me and I joined on with that.
So I still volunteer with those guys.
After doing that I met up with my friend
Collin again years down the road and he
introduced me to his friend Kerri Tadeau and
from there I told him what I was doing
with the highway and she told me about
one of her friends that was killed in Afghanistan
and just off the top of my head I told her,
"Well, if the highway means a lot to you
just to let you know if you are ever
interested you can adopt a section of
the highway and you can clean it."
And from there also they put up a sign
of who cleans it or in memory so from
there she adopted a portion of the highway
where her friend Michelle Mendes,
who was killed in Afghanistan.
She adopted a portion of the highway
that was actually right by her hometown
which is by the highway. And from there
she loved it and she thought it was an
amazing idea and it was a great initiative
and then we were sitting down one day
and she had this idea or we had this
idea of like, "Hey let’s adopt the whole
highway and clean it." So we did that
and it took some time to go through
all the red tape and the safety and a
couple of months went by and then we
had the green light and we found
ourselves on the highway cleaning
the highway. And it was adopted.
All the primary overpass sections
of the highway so where you would
see repatriation of like, you know,
firefighters or people on the overpasses
waving or flying flags we decided to clean
those on and off routes and the overpass
so that they would be good to go the next
time when somebody fell. So it took us
three weeks to do it and it was about 300 plus
something kilometres and just shy of 400
garbage bags. And to this day it’s an
ongoing thing. It happens twice a year.