april 08, 2009 12:09am
July 6, 2008 The young people
July 6, 2008
I woke up with the sun this morning, it’s a wonderful day in Canada. I climbed out of the Blue Bomber and stepped into the side of the plywood that surrounded the booth, that left a mark and twisted my ankle a good one. The road manager from "Zappa does Zappa" came running over to me, as I was on the ground, to see if I needed any assistance. This was not the first time I had turned my ankle, over the years of playing Canadian football I had stretched the tendon in my ankle a couple of times. As long as I am careful were I step I’m OK. After gathering myself I made my way to the small plastic house this morning for a long awaited visit. I then set out for a ride on the Harley to locate a master cylinder for the Blue Bomber, get an elastic bandage, and some anti inflammatory for my ankle. I headed out to Constance Bay to the home of my new found friends, Kevin and his wife Sharon. He had found a master cylinder for me from a friend at an auto parts store on Friday but he did not have the truck at home that had the original master in it. He invited me out to lunch at his local restaurant for breakfast. When we got there the place was packed and it took an hour and a half to get and finish our meal. By then I was late for work at the Blues Fest and Kevin said that we should pick up the master from his shop, so we decided to do just that. Kevin suggested that he ride on the back of my bike and we would go get the part, but on further thought he decided not to ride on the pee pad and to have Sharon drive him while I follow. Needless to say we lost each other in traffic. I started following the same make and model of car as Sharon’s for about two Km’s when the car pulls into grocery store and I’m thinking what the heck is this guy doing, he knows I need to get to the Blues Fest for work and he is stopping at a grocery store. So I pull up beside the car and low and behold it’s not Kevin and Sharon. Well the look on the face’s of the man and women in the car was priceless. Imagine having a big guy on a Harley following your family car and looking all P-Oed because you are making an unscheduled stop. So I waved with a smile on my face realizing that I had made a mistake and motored down the road to see if I could find Kevin. I got to the 417 and called Kevin and he told me to meet him at another location of which I could not find. By the time I called him back I was closer to the Blues Fest than I was to him, so I went to work.
I had a good day at the festival and got some more leads on local legions and a veteran’s hospital that I will try to visit this week. The donation bucket was very light today and the only reason that I noticed is that on this day at the festival there was a lot of young people in attendance. I have found that a number of young people, not all, don’t seem to have the time to stop and talk, not just about the “Online Veteran Video Library” but about anything to do with veterans issues. That is why our mission is very important to complete, so the people that are interested will have a place to go on the net to see stories about Canadian veterans.
Please don’t get me wrong all you young people out there, I know you care about our veterans but there is more to remembering than just observing a moment of silence once a year. A perfect example of this is that a 22 year old girl came up to the F.O.V. booth today at the Blues Fest and she told me that she was raised on army bases in every province in Canada. She seemed quite interested in our mission and had lots of questions about how she could get involved in helping to gather videos of our veterans. I told her to take the initiative and seek out veterans in her area and strike up a conversation with them and ask permission to video their story’s. Start with your family members than branch out into the community. I told her if you call ahead to a veteran’s hospital or a Legion and make the request to visit with some veterans they will be more than willing to sit down with you and submit a testimonial. She was very interested and said she would go to our web site and try to help. So all young people are not disinterested, some young people are enthused with our mission and will help in the gathering our veterans video’s.
