"Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The Torch; be yours to hold it high."

Tuesday, 09 November 2004

The Right Honourable Paul Martin
Prime Minister of Canada
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa K1A 0A2

Dear Prime Minister,

Re: Armistice Day 2004

My great-uncle returned from France in 1919 with his lungs forever incapacitated from choline gas. My father taught me to observe a moment of silence on "the eleventh day of the eleventh month" each year on Armistice Day to honour the defenders of our freedom long before I knew what "armistice" meant. Later in school I learned Major McCrea's great poem which exhorted us that "The Torch" was now ours, "to hold it high." As a responsible citizen I have tried hard to live those inspiring words, believing in the ultimate goodness of mankind and in the reliable justness of good government.

Regrettably as Remembrance Day approaches this year and we are once again urged to "take up the quarrel" we must recognize a very serious and deeply disturbing fact. The "foe" with whom we now must contend is your Liberal government.

In passing the Firearms Act your Liberal government is attempting to usurp the Rights and Freedoms which two generations of Canadian men and women fought and died to protect. In two world wars hundreds of thousands of Canadians suffered unimaginable hardships to preserve and defend what your Liberal government is now trying to destroy with this unjust, unconscionable law.

Mr Prime Minister, before you continue to make a mockery of Remembrance Day and further desecrate our Canadian dead, repeal the Firearms Act.

Sincerely,

Edward B. Hudson DVM, MS
Secretary

CC:	Lt Governor Lynda Haverstock
Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan
Steven Harper, Leader of Opposition
Garry Breitkreuz, MP
Provincial Premiers


Canadian Unregistered Firearms Owners Association
402 Skeena Crt  Saskatoon
Saskatchewan    S7K   4H2
1-306-242-2379   fax 1-306-249-2359
edwardhudson@shaw.ca
http://www.cufoa.ca

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely signing, fly
scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The Torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

Major John McCrae, Ypres, 1915