Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would also like to recognize the veterans, particularly in my riding and in my family. Mr. Speaker, when I was a child, I did not realize that I was growing up in the recent shadow of much grief which had resulted from my parent's involvement in war.

Our parents shielded us from this pain. My father entered the British army at the tender age of 20. When I think that is just about the age of my boys now, it is shocking. My mother had said goodbye to two of her brothers when she was 16 years old. One never came back and the other came back shell shocked and suffered anxiety the rest of his life, never able to move away from the memory of the wounded and dead he picked up on the front lines as part of the ambulance brigade. He had been put in the ambulance brigade because he could not bring himself to bear arms.

During that time, when his brother was close by in France, my uncle did not realize how close he was to him and later he received word that his younger brother had been killed in action. Knowing that he was so close by, he had such a reaction to this that again, he was just shell shocked for the rest of his life. The only, I guess, happy news for Uncle Bruce was that he did meet a beautiful, sophisticated Dutch woman in Holland when he was there and she did come back to Canada after the war to marry him as a Dutch war bride.

I would also like to recognize my grandfather who served in the First World War. I have to tell you, I became one of his favourite grandchildren because I moved up North where aboriginal people were and he served in the trenches in the First World War alongside aboriginal soldiers. He said that was the place to be. They had the skills to listen and to survey the situation and if there was a place that you had to be in those trenches, he said he wanted to be with the aboriginal soldiers.

I would also like today to honour my father-in-law, who was too young to be in the Second World War, but from Holland, he was taken to the German work camps and served during the war in a camp.

Mr. Speaker, these are all relatives of mine who have actually passed on now, but when I look at veterans, I can just hold them in the highest regard and appreciate them, knowing what they have been through. I would just like to thank all of the veterans in the Northwest Territories today who served for our freedom. Thank you.