June 06, 2004
Normandy, France

SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER

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“Keep pressing ahead,” they were told. Against the snipers, against the mortars, against the mighty guns encased in the German pillboxes on that morning, it was a soldier’s only chance at accomplishing his mission. It was his best chance at surviving. Keep pressing ahead.

In choppy seas, the doors of the landing crafts opened, as they opened all along the northern shore of France, as they had opened two years earlier at Dieppe. So many Canadians died there for the cause of liberty. Out on the channel on D-Day, some spoke of revenge for that grim day. Others remained silent as the coast grew larger, the battle grew nearer. Sixty years ago today, the doors opened, and they pressed ahead.

They had been training for this. They had been waiting. Thousands of Canadian soldiers pressed ahead here against an entrenched enemy.

Men fell around them. A friend, a brother, someone with whom they had just shared a joke, or a mug of rum, or a tin of soup. Men fell, and still they took the beach. Men fell, and still they took the fortifications. They moved inland. They fought in the streets. They liberated towns.

As darkness came, they were still pressing ahead.

The waters of the English Channel and the winds of the Normandy coast have erased the footprints these men left in Juno Beach. But not even the great tides of time can wash away the deep impressions they have made in our national memory, and in the chronicle of the free world.

When these soldiers, these men of nerve, are gone, their children will still come here, and their grandchildren. Prime ministers will come. Artists and historians will come. Those whose grandfathers, great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers landed on June 6th, 1944. Those who know the terrible cost of war only from books. They will come. Canadians will come.

We will come to this lonely patch of beauty to look upon the beaches, to reflect, to marvel, to feel the tears rise and the heart pound, to say a silent thank you. Forever more we will come to this place of sad and triumphant history to see where tyranny was repelled and where freedom was reborn.

Like the men who stormed this beach, we keep pressing ahead. As men and women. As a nation. As a global community.

Because of your valour, because of the sacrifice of those who died here, we have that opportunity, and we will seize it. We will always seek to press ahead.

But we will pause, too. We will pause and think of you. We will think of those whose last breath was of this air. We will think of you, and we will be grateful.