Marching Home
Posted May 30, 2011 02:22:15 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Aud was filled with gun smoke and music Sunday afternoon. Blanks were fired by soldiers to kick off Marching Home: A Musical Tribute to our Veterans and a celebration of the approaching end of the Canadian combat mission in Afghanistan.
Musical performances included Canadian Country singer Aaron Lines, Waterloo Regional Police Service Ceremonial Band, The Paris – Port Dover Pipes and Drums and the Air Command Showband, Jetstream.
Governor General David Johnston was in attendance along with his wife, Mrs. Sharon Johnston. He delivered a speech ahead of the unveiling of the Kin Canada Portraits of Honour. “As we listen to this inspired music, it makes us so grateful to be in this special land, Canada. Our men and women in uniform are there (Afghanistan) because they are attempting to provide and protect the values we hold so dear. The ability to determine who shall govern us on the basis of a ballot box and not on a pointed gun.”
The Kin Canada Portraits of Honour is an oil-based hand painted 10′ by 50′ mural featuring the faces of 155 Canadian Soldiers lost in the Afghanistan mission. Since the completion of the piece, one more serviceman has died, Thirty-one year-old Bombardier Karl Manning from Chicoutimi, Quebec. Cambridge Artist David Sopha tells 570News that Manning is already sketched in and will be painted into the mural in the next couple of days. “It does take me about 80 hours to put the face on, each one, to have it completed…I have a sketch that I’ve done of Karl. He’s sitting up there now. So everybody can see and he’d be a part of it today.”
Sopha has worked for 2-and-a-half years to get the mural finished. It was a newspaper article that sparked inspiration in Sopha “Back in 2008 when I saw the article in the Record that we had just lost our 100th troop. When I looked at those faces, those postcard faces on the front of the paper, it just really got to me, as emotional as it is looking at this painting right now. So I knew and I felt compelled to do something for them.”
Sopha adds “to anybody who would like to see the painting, I’m sure you’ll get a chance if you follow our website (www.portraitsofhonour.ca), you’ll see where we’re going, if you want to buy a really cool t-shirt, or some merchandise, please do, it helps us get across the country.”
The Portraits of Honour will crisscross Canada over the next 7-months, stopping in the community of each soldier to die in Afghanistan. It will make a stop at the War Memorial in Ottawa on Remembrance Day before taking its permanent home at the Canadian Artillery Museum in Shilo, Manitoba.
Check out this video of the Portraits of Honour and an interview with its artist, David Sopha.
