‘She is the guardian angel of the village’: Mother of the National Silver Cross remembers her murdered daughter in Afghanistan | The Canadian News

Drive through the small town of Les Méchins, QC, and you will find a monument that you probably won’t miss.

Right on the main road, at the base of a Canadian flag, lit up at night, there is a statue of a young woman.

The people here knew her. It’s that kind of place. It is so small that when Karine Blais was assassinated in Afghanistan, it was a loss for all Les Méchins.

“It was as if the war felt very close,” says Josée Simard, Karine’s mother. “Someone from the village had gone on a mission and did not return.”

Simard has been selected by the Canadian Legion as this year’s National Mother of the Silver Cross. On Remembrance Day, and for the next year, it will represent all mothers who lost sons or daughters in military service in the country.

Blais was killed on April 13, 2009 while on patrol in northern Kandahar. He was driving a Coyote armored vehicle when he collided with an improvised explosive device. The vehicle rolled over, Blais was killed and two other soldiers were injured.

Simard says she was asked to be Silver Cross’s Mother before, but she always refused. The normal family tradition is to meet at home with men and women who were with their daughter in Afghanistan. Some have left the military, others are still in the service, but they like to be together on November 11 and remember Karine. Simard will be in Ottawa for Remembrance Day this year, but says friends are still gathering at his house.

“Everybody adored her,” says Simard.

Karine Blais was born on January 4, 1988 in Cowansville, Que. He was only a few years old when he moved with his mother and brother to Les Méchins, about 400 kilometers northeast of Quebec City, on the south bank of the St-Lawrence River in the Gaspé region of Quebec.

As a child, Blais grew up dreaming of joining the military. In 2006, he made the leap from cadets to Royal 22^{North Dakota} Regiment.

Before leaving for Afghanistan, friends and family threw a farewell party. Just three weeks later, a military chaplain and some soldiers stopped in front of Simard’s house.

“It was around four in the afternoon,” says Simard. “I thought they were raising money for the cadets.”

Instead, it was to inform the family that Blais had been murdered. The next few days and weeks are hazy, Simard says. The family traveled to Trenton for Blais’s repatriation ceremony. His funeral was held at the local church in Les Méchins, across the street from the elementary school he had attended.

Blais’s brother was only 14 years old when she was killed and he took it very badly. Simard says he talked about following his sister into a career in the military.

“He wanted to join the army, but I couldn’t allow it,” he says. “I couldn’t even hear him talk about it.”

After his death, Blais’s personal effects were packed up and shipped to Simard. In the 12 years since then, he says he still hasn’t been able to look at them. They are in a box in the basement, unopened.

Simard also doesn’t look at old photo albums. She says it’s too painful. That said, there are photos and mementos of your daughter all over the house.

There is a smiling high school photo in the living room and a more serious photo of the regiment.

Hanging on the kitchen wall is the framed photograph of Karine given to Simard by Governor General Michaëlle Jean at the repatriation ceremony in Trenton.

When Karine was killed, strangers sent cards and letters and wrote songs. An artist gave the family a bronze relief sculpture of Karine’s face. What probably required dozens of hours of work, came a few days after his death.

“When he died, all of Canada was in mourning,” says Simard. “I felt it.”

In 2011, Simard traveled to Afghanistan on a family visit to the Canadian Armed Forces. He was at the Kandahar airfield for the Remembrance Day ceremony on November 11 and laid a wreath at the cenotaph.

Simard says he was surprised by the extreme poverty he witnessed.

“I wanted to breathe the same air where Karine took her last breath,” says Simard. “Because I never saw her again. I never saw his body. “

The past few months have been difficult for Simard and his family as they have seen the Taliban regain control of Afghanistan following the US withdrawal.

Simard says it focuses on what was accomplished. A generation of women went to school and tasted freedom they would never have known. The recent protests by Afghan women taking to the streets, she says, are proof that something was achieved.

“The difference is there,” says Simard. “Karine didn’t die for nothing.”