Juno News - November 10, 2023


99-year-old Canadian WW2 pilot recalls D-Day and Liberation of Netherlands ｜ Remembrance Day


Episode Stats

Length

36 minutes

Words per Minute

130.50343

Word Count

4,794

Sentence Count

317


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I was very confident of the airplane and confident that I would never get hit.
00:00:06.280 Never.
00:00:07.000 This is what we had been training for.
00:00:09.680 No fear.
00:00:10.560 It was all pumped up.
00:00:14.520 Since 1919 and every year onwards, Canadians have observed a moment of silence on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
00:00:23.760 Canadians take this time for an uninterrupted moment to reflect on the sacrifice of the over 118,000 Canadians who have served this country in uniform and who have paid the ultimate price to defend this country since Confederation.
00:00:37.700 More than 66,000 Canadians died in the First World War and more than 45,000 Canadians died in the Second World War.
00:00:45.280 In the case of the Second World War, every single person who served this country volunteered for king and country, volunteered to fight for our flag.
00:00:55.120 Although sacrifice and bravery on such a scale is hard to comprehend, it's important to remember that people like the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and who fought at Bimmy Ridge live amongst us today.
00:01:06.860 Over 40,000 Canadians served this country in the war in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2011.
00:01:13.320 158 Canadians died in Afghanistan serving this country, our country.
00:01:20.220 As the years go by and as the country undergoes rapid transformation, becoming unrecognizable from the one that sent those boys across the Atlantic to fight for this country all those years ago,
00:01:29.980 it's arguably more important now than ever before for us as Canadians to never forget the bravery and sacrifice that so many Canadians displayed for this country.
00:01:40.600 At cemeteries across Canada and in the battlefields of Europe, you will find simple headstones with a maple leaf on top,
00:01:48.140 marking the place where a Canadian hero has been laid to rest.
00:01:52.720 At Mount Pleasant Cemetery, you'll find stones marking the Canadian heroes who gave up their lives in the First World War,
00:01:59.320 such as David Lamb, John Dixon, and 18-year-old Samuel Shears, who all gave up their lives fighting for this country.
00:02:07.800 These men were never able to come home and to tell their story, but luckily we are able and have the privilege to be able to speak with a Canadian hero who did come home.
00:02:16.140 Let me introduce you to Honorary Lieutenant General Richard Romer, Distinguished Flying Cross from Hamilton, Ontario.
00:02:22.820 In 1942, on his 18th birthday, Richard Romer immediately volunteered to serve his country and to become a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
00:02:31.920 By the age of 20, Romer was flying several air reconnaissance missions over the English Channel and into occupied France every day as a member of the Canadian 430 Squadron.
00:02:42.300 On D-Day, Romer was flying over the beaches as Canadians laid down their lives to liberate Europe in the single largest amphibious assault the world has ever seen.
00:02:52.060 By the age of 21, Richard Romer had successfully completed over 130 missions in the war, and when he returned home, his next mission was to build this country, to serve his community and his country for the rest of his life.
00:03:07.580 Romer is a member of Canada's greatest generation, the definition of a living legend. This is his story.
00:03:14.920 Lieutenant General Richard Romer, thank you so much for this opportunity to speak with you.
00:03:18.820 It's an opportunity that I wouldn't miss for the world.
00:03:22.480 Well, you know, there's just so much I'd like to get into and be able to discuss with you, and it's kind of tough to know where to start.
00:03:28.780 But why don't we start in 1942 on your 18th birthday when you volunteered to join the war and to fight for this country, to join the Royal Canadian Air Force.
00:03:38.420 Take me through that. Why did you feel so compelled to volunteer?
00:03:41.520 I always wanted to fly airplanes. That was always been my ambition. I wanted to fulfill it. So the place to go, I was in London, Ontario, building, repairing airplanes.
00:03:56.980 And I went to the recruiting office and passed all the exams, physical and otherwise.
00:04:06.840 And on my 18th birthday, I walked in, put the uniform on, and I was in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
00:04:14.660 And I've been there ever since. And I'm still there because I am the honorary lieutenant general of the armed forces.
00:04:22.760 Do you think that, do you think today that Canadians of the younger generation would have been so willing to serve this country in a time of war?
00:04:31.060 Do you think that that same kind of quality of bravery exists in the younger generation you see?
00:04:35.680 That's a very difficult question to answer because the whole world has changed.
00:04:41.940 We're going to let in a half a million people into this country this year alone.
00:04:47.860 It's absolutely interesting that we're doing that.
00:04:52.700 And so if you're going to ask all those people if they'd be prepared to fight for Canada, you probably wouldn't get any answer, whatever.
00:05:01.940 Yeah, well, it's interesting to see how it'll all play out.
00:05:06.580 Let me ask you, did you know you would end up being a reconnaissance pilot during your training in Canada?
00:05:11.380 Or was your role known to you when you made it to England in that training?
00:05:15.800 It wasn't made until I had been there for some time.
00:05:21.280 Well, when I arrived in England after going through the U-boat attacks, when we did, it was quite something.
00:05:35.540 I hadn't been designated to bombers or fighters or whatever.
00:05:40.920 I managed to talk my way into fighters, and someone had turned up at a place, an airfield I was at, with a Mustang 1 airplane.
00:05:52.900 And they talked to me about flying that machine, and I was really taken with it as a fighting airplane.
00:06:03.560 So I switched to training to be a person who would go and look for the enemy, the enemy's guns or tanks or whatever at low level,
00:06:23.320 and to be able to tell the army where they were.
00:06:28.080 Reconnaissance was the name of the game.
00:06:30.020 So I became a fighter reconnaissance trainee, got through that all right, joined the squadron, 430 flew the Mustang, and that was our job.
00:06:42.000 The only problem with the job was you had to do it at low level, and people were firing at you in a way that you could see every time.
00:06:51.360 I want to get into that, but you touched on this briefly.
00:06:54.080 The Atlantic crossing from Canada just to get to England, and what it was like having to cross the Atlantic and deal with U-boats.
00:07:02.060 I mean, tell me about what that was like, just getting to England in the first place.
00:07:06.080 One of the scariest 10 days I've ever had in my life, quite apart from me getting shot at in an airplane.
00:07:16.200 But I got on a tramp steamer called the Torhead in Halifax Harbour in April of 1942.
00:07:28.000 There were six of us on board.
00:07:29.920 I was the senior Air Force person at 19.
00:07:33.600 In any event, off we started, but as soon as we got out of the harbor, the U-boats were waiting for us.
00:07:43.560 And they hit, I think it was eight or ten of our ships in a convoy of about 60 people.
00:07:54.060 The convoy number was 231.
00:07:56.900 It was written about by all kinds of people, and it was really scary.
00:08:01.560 I got on the bridge with the captain, who was a little man, about 70 years old, white hair.
00:08:07.700 And I stayed with him as the senior person during the whole trip across, and watched the torpedoes going by.
00:08:20.460 They all went by, because if you got hit in those days in a steamer, freighter,
00:08:29.700 there was no way of saving him, because it was the ice water, you'd be dead in no time.
00:08:38.020 So in any event, we didn't get hit.
00:08:41.620 And it was a scary ten days, I can tell you.
00:08:45.780 The first eight days were just really something.
00:08:48.940 But I was there with the captain all the time, and got through it, but scary is the word.
00:08:58.360 I can imagine.
00:08:59.220 I mean, it's just, it's incredible that there was so much danger, just getting to the war itself.
00:09:03.300 Yeah.
00:09:03.780 Couldn't just show up and get going.
00:09:05.960 No, no.
00:09:06.440 But when you did, so you got to England, you were placed in the 430 squadron, you came to grips with the Mustang, that fighter jet.
00:09:15.940 Take us through what that first mission you went on was.
00:09:19.600 You did 135 missions in the war.
00:09:23.300 But let's go to number one.
00:09:24.360 The first time you got in the cockpit, and you knew you were going over to take photographs and do reconnaissance over France.
00:09:31.340 What was that feeling like, sitting in the cockpit?
00:09:33.880 It was scary, but it wasn't, I was never afraid.
00:09:39.620 I was very confident of the airplane, and confident that I would never get hit.
00:09:47.580 Never.
00:09:49.300 And that's the way you had to approach getting into the airplane, turning it on, going with the one or two other airplanes with you.
00:10:01.340 And you know you're going to get shot at.
00:10:04.280 But it isn't a fear quotient.
00:10:08.040 It's a, you have to do it.
00:10:11.380 Let's get it over with and do it.
00:10:13.300 And that's the way I went my 135 missions.
00:10:17.240 I had to do it that way.
00:10:19.100 At any time when you were flying and the German anti-aircraft guns were coming at you, did it ever cross your mind to say, boy, I wish I never did this?
00:10:27.400 No, I've never had that wish.
00:10:29.640 I always had the view that it would never happen to me.
00:10:37.680 And one day, I'm well into French territory, enemy territory, and I had the biggest hole appeared automatically in the middle of my left wing.
00:10:53.300 And I'm down low.
00:10:55.260 So I got a direct hit.
00:10:57.640 But the thing went, most of it went through the wing.
00:11:01.040 Didn't hit the petrol or anything of that kind.
00:11:04.920 I was able to fly the airplane.
00:11:06.400 But I can tell you it got my attention for sure.
00:11:11.600 That's the only time I got hit.
00:11:13.660 Lots of stuff going by me all the time.
00:11:16.820 In fact, I had a reputation for being dumb enough to not care that much and little stories here and there.
00:11:26.060 So I never had fear from the point of view that from time to time I got scared enough that the stuff coming at me that I would put my head right down below the level of the machinery just to see if I could avoid the hit.
00:11:49.800 Of course, it was stupid, but automatic.
00:11:54.060 I just would duck down here until it was all over.
00:11:59.100 So I'm sure that many of the people in your squadron didn't make it home.
00:12:05.160 That's correct.
00:12:05.620 And it was obviously an incredibly dangerous role to be a reconnaissance pilot.
00:12:10.460 Big time.
00:12:11.580 Big time.
00:12:12.580 And I had the reputation that I would bring my airplane back and crump it on my field and walk away from it.
00:12:21.560 And that was okay because that's exactly what was happening.
00:12:27.340 And I managed to survive.
00:12:30.680 Incredible.
00:12:31.320 And with a couple of major incidents that were never reported.
00:12:37.760 Yes.
00:12:38.120 One of them is that I caught Field Marshal Rommel.
00:12:43.780 I didn't know who it was, but I caught him at low level.
00:12:47.960 And I was not permitted to shoot up his car.
00:12:53.180 It was a big, big German top-down car.
00:13:02.220 Two men in the front, three in the back.
00:13:05.660 But I was not permitted to shoot him up.
00:13:08.540 It was, I didn't know who it was.
00:13:10.760 So, what I did was, I called the group control center on the radio who knew there were Spitfires.
00:13:22.660 They sent a Spitfire in, followed this car, shot it up.
00:13:28.040 And the man in the front right seat was Rommel, the great general.
00:13:34.800 And he was very badly injured as a result.
00:13:39.940 And that didn't come up until later.
00:13:42.260 But nobody cared.
00:13:43.380 You know, it was a Canadian.
00:13:44.560 It didn't matter a damn.
00:13:46.660 But that changed the face of the war because he was out of the war.
00:13:51.880 And the second thing had to do with the major event was I used to range artillery guns, long-range artillery guns,
00:14:05.460 and by talking to the people running the gun.
00:14:11.040 And when they would fire with big shells, I would then directly change the fire location,
00:14:20.520 left or right 100 yards or whatever, and fix it.
00:14:23.700 And so, when the time came for a major shoot at the end of the war, in November,
00:14:34.160 the wing commander chose me to do it.
00:14:39.480 And I got it done, and I knocked the bridges down at a place called Wendlau in Holland.
00:14:46.360 And as it happened, the Germans were heavily into Holland, as we know.
00:14:57.180 The Germans did exactly what the big brains, the headquarters thought might happen.
00:15:04.900 When the time came, they surrendered.
00:15:10.920 And on May the 5th, the war ended because of my bridge being hit.
00:15:17.040 They had no way of getting back to Germany.
00:15:20.140 And so, they came to Wageningen, is the name of the town,
00:15:24.880 and surrendered to the Canadian generals because I had knocked bridges down.
00:15:33.540 That's it.
00:15:34.360 Two of them.
00:15:34.920 Not bad.
00:15:35.740 You touched on something there when you were discussing the fact that you played a key role
00:15:40.400 in taking out Field Marshal Rommel.
00:15:42.600 I mean, I want to get into that, too, but you said something I thought was of note,
00:15:46.080 that people didn't really care because it was a Canadian who did it,
00:15:50.820 and Canadians didn't get the recognition that you feel they deserved.
00:15:55.660 That's right.
00:15:56.740 Tell me about that.
00:15:57.500 Well, both incidents came to light after the war was finished,
00:16:04.580 and they were fully documented now.
00:16:10.140 But at the time, I had no presence.
00:16:17.120 The fact that I had done this really wasn't known until after the war.
00:16:24.520 And so, there wasn't any big to-do about it at all.
00:16:30.960 But I've completed several resumes of exactly what happened,
00:16:37.780 and I think there may be something coming soon in that regard,
00:16:42.480 even though it's a long time ago.
00:16:44.300 Well, we'll be looking out for it.
00:16:45.820 Well, if anybody has to make it happen, it is yours, certainly.
00:16:51.860 I know how to do it.
00:16:53.640 Yeah.
00:16:54.640 You didn't know that you were flying over Field Marshal Rommel at the time,
00:17:00.220 but you knew that it was something important
00:17:01.600 and that you had noticed something big was happening on the ground,
00:17:05.800 and you explained what that was like.
00:17:08.060 But in your book, generally speaking, your autobiography,
00:17:11.060 I noticed that you had a lot of respect for Rommel's ability in the battlefield.
00:17:17.860 Oh, indeed.
00:17:18.500 And a general respect for the enemy.
00:17:22.120 Explain that a little bit.
00:17:23.660 Explain that mindset.
00:17:26.120 Well, it's the kind of mindset that I had.
00:17:28.960 I don't know how I developed it,
00:17:30.500 but the reality was these were people who were extremely intelligent,
00:17:38.760 quite capable, great leaders,
00:17:41.060 and I was not permitted to shoot them up.
00:17:45.920 And I was just well-pleased
00:17:47.200 because I wasn't of the kind that would like to get my gun sights on a car
00:17:55.120 and then kill two or three or four people.
00:18:00.840 I wasn't fixed for that.
00:18:04.880 So I wasn't permitted to do it either,
00:18:07.880 and so that soothed me very well.
00:18:09.880 Simple as that.
00:18:11.880 Yeah.
00:18:12.600 Well, I want to spend some time talking about D-Day.
00:18:15.420 Well, D-Day, we finally knew where the landing was going to be,
00:18:32.060 and the two of us went out from England and across.
00:18:38.060 It was a very exciting moment because this is what we had been training for.
00:18:42.840 There was no fear.
00:18:43.740 It was all pumped up.
00:18:45.720 And my trip across was very simple.
00:18:52.000 I was number two, flying on, there was a fellow called Jack Taylor,
00:18:59.780 and we got over to the beach sector and there was a wall of cloud right sitting over the beach
00:19:13.840 so that we had to go under the wall and down to about 500 feet to get through this,
00:19:21.460 which is what we did, people firing at us in the usual way.
00:19:28.820 Then we went down to Caen, which was a big town to do a reconnaissance,
00:19:32.840 came back up the Orne River,
00:19:35.860 and there was a big bridge there that the British had landed gliders filled with troops in.
00:19:44.980 They were fighting that battle at the moment.
00:19:48.420 Then up and down the beach, back and forth on a reconnaissance basis,
00:19:54.180 also looking for any fighters that might be coming to attempt to shoot up people on the beach.
00:20:02.000 And there weren't any, because we had, between the British and the Canadians and the Americans,
00:20:11.240 the fighters had fundamentally, from the German point of view, disappeared.
00:20:18.500 And then at that point, going up and down the beach, the two of us,
00:20:25.480 and I looked at my fuel gauge and it said zero.
00:20:29.560 So, because I had been flying on this other man, not really paying attention to my petrol.
00:20:39.480 And so I said to my number one, time to get home.
00:20:43.800 So, we left and went up to England and I landed in Thorne Island.
00:20:51.240 I mean, petrol ran out when I touched down, just barely mid.
00:20:57.760 But the concentration on what was happening there, outside the airplane, was total,
00:21:05.400 which is the reason I almost lost myself in terms of running out of fuel.
00:21:12.620 But I made it all right.
00:21:13.840 Yeah, and you went back later on the day.
00:21:17.280 Well, on the same day, oh well.
00:21:18.800 Wow, yeah.
00:21:19.400 I got fuel, no problem, in the P-51.
00:21:27.460 And back to base, got re-briefed again for a new mission, which I was leading this time.
00:21:33.560 So, it was a full day and I did, I think, two more, one more and then two more the next day.
00:21:44.360 It was, keep going.
00:21:46.520 And you can remember, you can remember what it was like that day?
00:21:49.560 Oh, absolutely.
00:21:51.040 Yeah.
00:21:51.380 Absolutely.
00:21:52.000 It was a great exercise in euphoria because we were doing what we've been trained to do
00:22:03.700 and we were doing it well.
00:22:06.560 And, yeah, it was scary from time to time.
00:22:10.780 But the reality was we were making progress on the ground, which was our job to help them.
00:22:18.800 And we did.
00:22:19.660 And from the sky on that day, could you feel like the invasion was working?
00:22:25.060 Could you see it making its progress?
00:22:28.160 And could you feel like you guys were winning the day?
00:22:31.880 We, when we got back to base, we could be, we were briefed as to how the Army,
00:22:39.340 the Army, British, Canadian, American were doing on the ground.
00:22:43.400 That's when we could tell we were making some real progress.
00:22:46.940 And they added that into what we could see when we were flying our reconnaissance.
00:22:52.640 So we could tell that we're making good progress indeed.
00:22:57.340 I'm in a little airplane and I'm totally concentrating with another two or three or whatever people.
00:23:05.000 And that's my world.
00:23:07.760 And if it's going bad for me, I can tell.
00:23:14.020 Or if it's going good, I can tell.
00:23:17.500 And getting back and forth 135 times is quite something.
00:23:24.820 Oh, certainly.
00:23:25.700 And I never thought about it very much.
00:23:29.780 The reality was, from time to time, I got scared big time.
00:23:36.720 But the reality was, I would stick my head below the level of the cockpit and keep going.
00:23:46.940 Hard to put it all into words.
00:23:50.060 I can only imagine.
00:23:51.080 Yeah.
00:23:51.900 Was there a sense amongst your squadron and amongst people involved in the war that they were involved in something very special?
00:24:00.580 Did you guys feel like you were in history?
00:24:04.400 Oh, yeah.
00:24:07.180 No question about that.
00:24:09.820 And in a sense, we had to have that kind of feeling.
00:24:14.360 And overall, particularly after we moved over to France, to our first airfield, I recall, B-8,
00:24:25.600 the engineers had made an airstrip for us.
00:24:28.560 And we moved over on June the 28th, shortly after D-Day.
00:24:35.780 And we operated from there, very close to the front lines.
00:24:41.180 And, as a matter of fact, some of my ashes are going to be at that airfield, because the family who were there, their name is Jean-Lé.
00:24:54.180 They picked up the farmhouse, huge farmhouse, after the war, where their airstrip was.
00:25:02.040 And we used part of their house for our waiting rooms and that kind of thing.
00:25:11.180 And so, we have remained in close contact with the Jean-Lé family.
00:25:21.040 So, that's the plan at the moment.
00:25:23.400 It may come off.
00:25:24.820 I haven't decided yet.
00:25:26.220 I'm wondering if you would be able to explain to our audience what medals you've received.
00:25:32.900 You're one of the most decorated Canadian citizens.
00:25:35.960 And could you go through what's on your shirt there for us?
00:25:39.560 No.
00:25:40.700 I won't do that.
00:25:42.520 But I'll tell you that the one on my collar is the Order of Canada.
00:25:48.400 It's special.
00:25:51.740 And I have the Distinguished Flying Cross, which was awarded by the then king.
00:26:02.760 The new king, by the way, is an old friend of mine, the King Charles.
00:26:10.280 We have...
00:26:11.140 That's another story.
00:26:13.340 And the matter of decorations are usually those that are handled in relation to particular battles
00:26:30.360 and campaigns and so forth.
00:26:35.380 So, about six of mine are special.
00:26:39.780 And the rest of them, there are about 20 of them, are routine.
00:26:46.180 So, that's all I can say about the battles.
00:26:52.360 I'm very pleased to have them and very honored indeed.
00:26:58.180 And I wear them whenever it's appropriate.
00:27:02.740 Certainly.
00:27:04.000 Stepping away from the war, I wonder if you could tell us what the proudest moment in your life has been.
00:27:09.780 The proudest moment in my life, in terms of personal achievement,
00:27:16.520 it was the first time I flew an airplane by myself in the Air Force.
00:27:23.600 And that was an accomplishment that one had to build on.
00:27:29.320 And I was able to build on it very successfully because I've carried virtually every rank in the Air Force off and on.
00:27:40.420 And I've just been very fortunate because that's what I wanted to do.
00:27:45.820 The principal thing in my life was to fly airplanes.
00:27:48.440 And I built all the other professions, like the law and authoring books and so forth.
00:27:57.640 All of them sort of came together.
00:28:00.080 So, I was very lucky.
00:28:01.980 You've spent your entire life serving Canada.
00:28:05.320 You were in the war, of course, and when you came back, you were a politician.
00:28:09.160 You served your community and your country in various roles and was the chief of the reserves.
00:28:14.600 And you've just been constantly been serving this country.
00:28:19.200 Where did that sense of public duty come from, you think?
00:28:22.800 I spent my life seizing opportunities.
00:28:28.460 A lot of people don't do that.
00:28:31.260 If I've seen an opportunity going by that I could participate in some activity,
00:28:38.320 like building a CN Tower, the hearings there, and any number of things,
00:28:45.600 I've always gone after the opportunity.
00:28:48.840 So, in the end result, I've had about six professions going all at the same time
00:28:58.020 with some degree of success, whether it's writing books or flying or business,
00:29:06.720 a whole slew of things.
00:29:09.940 But if there's one quality that I've been fortunate enough,
00:29:14.000 I've been able to see an opportunity, and even if I wasn't really familiar with the field,
00:29:21.500 if I could see that something could be done in there to achieve something different,
00:29:27.260 I would go and try to do it.
00:29:29.500 And I've done that, even though I'm, how old am I now?
00:29:34.240 I'm very old.
00:29:35.600 You've seen a lot in this country.
00:29:37.240 Yeah.
00:29:37.440 You've seen the country through the Depression, through the war.
00:29:39.780 You played a role in building this country.
00:29:42.220 I wonder what someone, with your experience, thinks about our country today
00:29:47.600 and where we're going to be in 25 years.
00:29:50.240 Where do you see Canada going in being in the next 25 or 50 years?
00:29:55.640 I don't think I've ever looked at Canada from that point of view.
00:29:59.040 I may have in some of my books, some of my fiction books,
00:30:05.760 writing fiction books successfully gives you a chance to express opinions
00:30:11.240 that you wouldn't otherwise.
00:30:12.660 And I think that many of the things that I've written, many of the books that I've written
00:30:21.480 encompassed my hope for the future, which is always extremely positive about Canada.
00:30:33.160 Sometimes it gets weakened badly, but in the end result, my faith in the country is being stretched
00:30:47.260 by the inability of the people of Canada to really realize that the big monster
00:30:55.300 to the north of us, called Russia, is a major threat.
00:31:02.260 And I've been pushing that one, I know as a policy matter,
00:31:07.260 but the reality is the Russians are in the high Arctic and they are building military stations
00:31:23.680 and they're doing it heavily and they're just on the other side of the Northwest Passage.
00:31:32.940 And I've been trying in my own way to ring the alarm bell saying we should be really concentrating
00:31:42.740 our defenses, the Air Force particularly, in the area of the Northwest Passage
00:31:51.920 and we should be doing it now.
00:31:54.240 My message has fallen on deaf ears and eyes, but that's the way life goes.
00:32:04.040 We'll do our best to try and get that message out there as much as we can.
00:32:08.420 Well, it's very important right now.
00:32:10.480 And one thing I've really been looking forward to asking you, being someone who has, as we've discussed,
00:32:17.360 done so much service to this country and put your life on the line for this country,
00:32:20.920 you know, as you said at the beginning of this, we're bringing in a lot of new people into Canada
00:32:25.960 and a lot of people are coming into this country.
00:32:28.340 And I'd like to know from your perspective, it's a tough question.
00:32:31.760 I can't answer it myself.
00:32:33.120 I wish I could, but I struggle to at least.
00:32:35.940 In your mind, what does it mean to be a Canadian?
00:32:39.280 Ah, it means to be, to me it's very simple.
00:32:43.780 Well, to me it means to be part of a country that is not a threat to anybody,
00:32:53.600 that is a little dragging its feet in terms of protecting itself.
00:33:01.180 I do a lot of talking and speaking, and I said, this is the finest country in the world in which to live.
00:33:13.800 We're letting too many people in from time to time.
00:33:16.880 We're doing, but the reality is we are not a power, but we are a presence.
00:33:30.300 And we're letting people in here by the high numbers of 500,000 a year.
00:33:38.520 I don't know how we're going to do that.
00:33:40.100 But the reality, to be a Canadian, is a matter of great pride for me.
00:33:48.100 And it's the safest country that I know to be a citizen
00:33:54.640 and a participating citizen to the best of one's ability.
00:34:02.040 It's the finest country in the world in which to live right now.
00:34:08.120 How can we as Canadians honour your sacrifice and the sacrifice of all the Canadians
00:34:15.140 that fought in the First World War and Second World War when everyone who survived has left?
00:34:22.800 All you can do is to do what we do on Remembrance Day.
00:34:27.920 A little bit of a ceremony.
00:34:29.340 I built the wall at Queen's Park over 10 years ago.
00:34:37.360 I'm going to be there again for that ceremony with the Premier.
00:34:43.640 Whether he knows or likes it or not, I will be there with him.
00:34:48.440 All we can do is to remember the diverse sacrifices made
00:34:54.520 and how important it was for us to participate in fighting the Germans
00:35:03.420 and all the other enemies we've had.
00:35:06.560 The last question I have for you, I wanted to ask this question at the end,
00:35:17.520 but what's the secret to living to be 100 years old?
00:35:21.420 Do you have any secret?
00:35:22.420 Yes, I do.
00:35:23.460 All right, what is it?
00:35:24.500 Keep breathing.
00:35:25.100 I did not expect to get to be 100.
00:35:29.060 I'm not there quite yet, but I've had a wonderful life,
00:35:35.780 a wonderful family, a wonderful wife and kids
00:35:38.600 and successes in many fields.
00:35:43.820 So I just think that I'm blessed.
00:35:48.460 But I don't worry about dying.
00:35:52.420 That's not a problem for me at all.
00:35:56.580 And that is one of the things that the vacuum between my ears
00:36:03.980 doesn't worry me about departing, which I have to do sometime soon.
00:36:10.880 But the reality is I've been very, very fortunate.
00:36:14.120 I've been facing death hundreds of times
00:36:18.120 and still here and to be able to talk with you
00:36:23.180 about a great country in which to live.
00:36:27.640 Lieutenant General Richard Romer, thank you so much.
00:36:30.220 This has been an honor to be able to speak with you.
00:36:32.680 My privilege to be able to speak with you.
00:36:35.260 Thank you.
00:36:40.380 Thank you.
00:36:41.740 Thank you.
00:36:41.880 Thank you.