By Greg Hill

It was May 19, 2006, Kandahar Afghanistan. As the aircraft captain that day, I stood at attention beside the ramp of my C130 transport. The sun was rising behind eight stone-faced members of Captain Nichola Goddard’s artillery platoon as they walked slowly toward me, shouldering the casket containing her body for her long journey home to rest, in Canada. Only hours before, she and these same men had been in a ferocious firefight, when the shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade pierced her skull, ending her 26 yr old life.

I saluted as they walked up the ramp and watched them come undone emotionally, as they gently set her down. Their final goodbyes complete, they returned to stand with the thousands of other soldiers on the tarmac, there to honour her departure. These men would soon be back ‘outside the wire’ in harm’s way. They would not get a long break to reflect and recover. There was work to be done.

A young soldier from Capt Goddard’s platoon accompanied her home, and he sat with us in the flight deck on that first leg back to our air base in the Emirates. We spoke briefly. Quiet, respectful, he said little, likely suffering the initial onset of what we used to call shell shock.

The mission was concurrently surreal, poignant, and emotional. It was the greatest honour of my 32-year military career.

Mission complete and back in camp, I was at the dining hall in camp that same night, still somewhat reeling from the experience. Several fellow military members nearby began complaining loudly that the trolley of Hagen Daaz ice cream (wheeled around the hall for their benefit) was pathetically short of appealing choices.

That’s the abrupt end of my ‘war story’, but why do I relate it? Because the contrast between the morning in Kandahar and dinner in camp reminds me of a troubling disconnect in our nation.

Capt Goddard and her men were fully invested in the battle, up to and including giving their lives for the cause. Others, on the very same mission, were living largely sheltered from what was at stake.

Today only a small element of society grasps the seriousness of our national situation. Liberty is under attack. The enemy of our God-given freedoms is at the gates. When thieves begin beating down the door, there is no neutral ground. You’re either engaged in fighting them off or you’re cowering, enabling the looting.

Comfort, convenience, and safety cannot be priorities, yet it seems at times we have a desperate grip on the benefits of simpler times while saying just enough to appear engaged. But speaking (or posting online) will never be enough. In the words of Viktor Frankl, “Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.”

My Christian faith undergirds all of my convictions and a Bible passage jumped off the page to me last year, speaking of Moses’ choosing to leave the relative privilege and ease of Egypt to lead the wandering Israelites through decades of suffering.

Hebrews 11:24-29 “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.”

2023 Canada: We need leaders who will fix their eyes resolutely forward, just as Moses did. Forward to a nation where our grandkids do not live under dark authoritarian rule; forward to a nation and time where autonomy, the ability to freely worship, to speak our minds openly once again thrive, unfettered; forward to the abject defeat of statists, globalists and the budding totalitarians seeking to steal our futures.

We’re inundated with pronouncements on how dire the situation is, but what are we supposed do? Well, like Moses, Solzhenitsyn, or Bonhoeffer, we embrace a sold-out, unrelenting commitment to truth. Make no mistake, we’re at a historic crossroads. Now is the time to count the cost.

I’ve wrestled with these thoughts for months and out of that penned a personal declaration. I humbly challenge you to consider it as a call on our collective lives:

I declare all that follows, calling out as a lie the societal claim that change is impossible. It begins with me:

• I will wholeheartedly pursue truth and will not speak, sign, or write anything that is not, as far as I know, the truth;
• I will, in spite of the cost, speak out against lies;
• I will stand alone, if need be, knowing that freedom is, as Pericles once said, “the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.”
• I will not repeat nor support radically progressive, ideological mantras. I will walk out of state, corporate or privately enforced indoctrination on the same;
• I will never acquiesce to the state’s violation of my God-given freedoms of speech, worship, conscience and bodily autonomy;
• I will persevere in the face of threats to livelihood, status or reputation, in spite of the pain or my own self-doubt;
• I will support with my words, actions and finances, others convicted of this need for a relentless commitment to truth and conscience.

All this I undertake, accepting that I may suffer the loss of social status, comfort, and ‘safety’. I am willing to do so, in exchange for the far superior and lasting bedrock of truth upon which our futures and freedom (and that of our children) must be grounded.

Many ask, “when will things improve?’ From my view, when enough Canadians prioritize this battle over their own comfort, safety and convenience. A small tipping point of society can change the course of history – but not without personal sacrifice.

These past years we’ve had ribbons to wear, signs to carry, rallies to attend and memes to post. I’ve done all of the above and they all have a place. But they will never effect change on their own. That will only come through individual (sometimes agonizing) moments of personal responsibility, where we determine what’s right and then courageously act upon it, day after day after day.

May God give each of us that courage and the wisdom we need for the challenging year and years ahead.

Greg Hill is a co-founder of FreeToFly.ca | “Along with retained lawyer Umar Sheikh, we are seeking justice for the aviation sector, after a year of coercive mandates. Unions abdicated their responsibility to protect members. Employers intimidated their employees, while ignoring basic human rights. This must never happen again. ​We will assist as many aviation professionals as possible, including those still employed but coerced into an undesired medical procedure.”