Virginia Hicks, named Canada's Silver Cross mother by the Royal Canadian Legion in June, will lay a wreath at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Remembrance Day on behalf of mothers whose children died in military service. Hicks, who lives in Frankford, Ont., has expressed her condolences to the families affected by the fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in Alberta last month.
The fire broke out during a training exercise at the base, located in Wainwright, Alta. Strong winds spread a grass fire across the training range, and four soldiers were killed while dozens more were injured. The dead have been identified as Sgt. Morgan Wong, Pte. Shaun Farrell, Pte. Aidan Goulding and Pte. Hayden Lykkemark. As of Nov. 4, the Department of National Defence reported that 14 burn patients had been discharged and 25 remained in hospital.
Three separate investigations into the incident are under way. The military has faced criticism for the slow release of details about what happened, a concern that families and members of the public have raised as the inquiries continue. Hicks has urged patience for the Wainwright families while those investigations proceed, asking that they be given time to reach findings before conclusions are drawn.
Hicks knows the grief of losing a child in uniform. Her daughter, Mariebeth Short, a sapper with a combat engineer regiment, died on Sept. 23, 2002, when a light armoured vehicle rolled over in Petawawa, Ont. The front wheel assembly snapped off and the vehicle rolled twice. The investigation found that a substandard weld from the factory had caused the failure. Short was 22 years old and came from a family with four generations of military service.
The family pursued a lawsuit against the manufacturer, but it failed, and the company later went bankrupt, leaving the family without the accountability they had sought. Hicks, who served more than ten years in the military and deployed to Kabul in 2003, received the official findings on Nov. 11, 2003, the same date on which the country marks Remembrance Day. She visits the accident site in Petawawa every year, and she has said the military has been more supportive of her family than the manufacturer ever was.
That contrast shapes how Hicks views the response to the Wainwright tragedy. Her own experience of a long wait for answers, and of a company that could not be held to account, gives her a clear sense of what the Wainwright families are facing in the weeks and months ahead. The wreath she will lay in Ottawa reflects that shared loss, as the country marks Remembrance Day while the cause of the Alberta fire is still being determined.
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