Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Remembrance Highway - Autoroute du Souvenir

Part of a busy Quebec highway that provides a major link with Ontario is being renamed in honour of Canada's war dead. A stretch of Highway 20 between Montreal and the Ontario border, from the Turcot Interchange in Montreal to Riviere-Beaudette at the Ontario-Quebec border will officially be known as Autoroute du Souvenir. That translates as Remembrance Highway.
Premier Jean Charest made the announcement today at a news conference in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Que., where there is a veterans hospital. Charest said it is important to commemorate the courage of fallen soldiers. He unveiled a green highway panel that features the words: Autoroute du Souvenir and a big red poppy. The stretch of highway has special significance because it travels past a veterans hospital and a military cemetery.
"We want to do a very special gesture and do something very significant, symbolically for the men and women who defend our freedoms," Charest told a hall full of aging veterans.
"It would be easy for us to forget unless we, as a society, commit to remembering and it's a commitment we're making today to never let the sacrifice of those who gave their lives be forgotten," Charest said.
In August, a part of Ontario's Highway 401 between Trenton and Toronto, often used to repatriate fallen Canadian soldiers, was renamed the Highway of Heroes.

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