Canadian soldier Nathan Cirillo was shot and killed by a gunman at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. Photo: Instagram He was such a modern young guy, Nathan Frank Cirillo, yet he died performing a task that is both so eternal and so soldierly, standing guard over one of his own.
Cpl. Cirillo, just 24, was the soldier killed at the National War Memorial in downtown Ottawa Wednesday.
He and Cpl. Brandon Stevenson, who was unhurt, were the honour guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
While they carried weapons, they weren’t loaded, as is — or perhaps was — the tradition for those chosen to represent their regiments in the nation’s capital.
In the tomb an unidentified Canadian was ceremonially re-buried in 2000, his remains exhumed from a graveyard near Vimy Ridge in northern France, where he had fallen 97 years ago in the ferocious battle that is widely credited with giving Canada a glimpse of her potential greatness independent of Britain.
Both Cpls. Cirillo and Stevenson are members of the storied Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, a reserve infantry regiment out of Hamilton, Ont.
In the dozens of pictures Cpl. Cirillo posted on social media, he appeared the epitome of the “suave bumptiousness that is the mark of the Argyll,” as the late Claude Bissell, the former longtime University of Toronto president and a captain in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders during the Second World War, once put it.
Canadian reservist Cpl. Nathan Cirillo is shown in an undated photo taken from his Facebook page. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HANDOUT/FACEBOOK
In these pictures, Cpl. Cirillo, who stood six-foot tall, also looked a typical infantryman, both tough as nails and endearingly tender, now rough-and-ready on one military exercise or another, now cradling the dogs he rescued and adored.
Robert (Doc) Fraser, the Argylls’ regimental historian, looked at some of those pictures with a lump in his throat. “I’ve seen my own son look like that,” he said, meaning how soldiers are after their work is done and, unshaven and exhausted, they drop the kit and just play, not so different from the pups Cpl. Cirillo adopted.
Fraser’s son is an Argyll too, who spent 11 months in Afghanistan, as did many members of the unit.
He told someone, who asked what it was like having his kid overseas in a place like Kandahar, “It was like trying to hold your breath for 11 months … And this poor kid (Cpl. Cirillo) goes off to Ottawa, to do something dignified and ceremonial, and gets shot in this mindless, stupid, violent, outrageous act.”
In many of the pictures Cpl. Cirillo posted of himself online with his dogs, a legion of young women remarked upon the comeliness of both man and canine.
“Oh yeah, he’s easy to look at,” Sgt. Justin Chaston said of the young man he watched grow from a well-known fixture on Hamilton’s club scene (Cpl. Cirillo once worked security at some of these clubs) into a genuine leader in the unit who “was definitely going places” and loved his little boy.
As the second-on-command of the regiment’s weapons detachment — a bitter stroke, given his own weapon wasn’t loaded when he was killed — he was working full-time for the unit and thinking, his sergeant said, of switching to the regular force.
Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, 24, died after being shot at the Canadian War Memorial in Ottawa. Photo: Facebook
But he died a citizen soldier, the name most reservists prefer.
As Col. (retired) Paul Taillon, an adjunct professor at the Royal Military College, says, “We hide the regulars away, on bases,” so reservists are the pre-eminent link between civilian Canada and the army.
There are almost 20,000 reservists, or part-time soldiers, from about 100 Canadian cities and towns.
Col. Taillon was part of a small group of military who worked with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office to turn the honour guard into a showcase for the reserves.
It was only this year, Col. Taillon said, a mix of regiments began rotating the duty.
He walked by the two young soldiers a couple of times Wednesday, to and from early meetings. “I stared at them,” he said, and recognized that they were Argylls by their sporrans. “They just looked great, doing their duty, the pride of regiment.”
Nathan Cirillo, a reservist from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada, was killed in Ottawa while standing guard before the National War Memorial. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Lynett
Cpls. Cirillo and Stevenson arrived in Ottawa Oct. 13, and were due to return to Hamilton on Nov. 11, after the Remembrance Day ceremonies at the War Memorial.
“It’s an honour” to be chosen for the job, said the Argylls’ commanding officer, Lt.-Col. Lawrence Hatfield, a lawyer in civilian life. After a formal selection process, “We sent our two top soldiers.”
At the Argylls’ downtown armoury, Lt.-Col. Hatfield said, Hamiltonians already were dropping off flowers. The regiment’s padre and an assisting officer are also with Cpl. Cirillo’s mother, and flew to Ottawa with her and other relatives late Wednesday.
It was a commanding officer from another regiment who went to the Cirillo home to deliver the dreadful news; it’s done this way so Lt.-Col. Hatfield can continue to see the family without them immediately, on seeing his face, remembering the day he came to the door.
The army has its ways, born of hard practice.
A man in an Argylls jacket is comforted by fellow soldiers after placing flowers in memory of soldier Nathan Cirillo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Lynett
“We used to define ‘war’ and ‘peace,’ ” as Col. Taillon said. “But a declaration of war is no longer done. Now, we’re in this grey period.”
It’s never really grey for soldiers, even if the front line is as invisible here now, as it was in Kandahar.
It was on May 21, 1939, King George VI came to Ottawa for the formal unveiling of the National War Memorial.
The result of a worldwide competition, won by Vernon March of England, the memorial is called “The Response.” Its 22 bronze figures represent all those who contributed to the magnificent Canadian effort in the First World War.
First through the soaring arch, though, as they are always first through any door, are the infantrymen. It was ever thus, even in what passes for peacetime.
“The memorial,” the king said that day, “speaks to her world of Canada’s heart.”
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