Friday, August 24, 2007

Support the tr ... oooooh, look, a sale at IKEA!


Uh oh ... I'm guessing this wasn't quite the turnout they were counting on:

Speaking at Friday's so-called Red Rally in Toronto, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier acknowledged troop morale is “lower” after the soldiers from the famed Vandoos regiment were killed in Afghanistan by roadside bomb blasts.

“If there's a time when spirits are lower and they actually need more signs of support from the people back here in Canada, it's now, and so it's more important than ever,” Gen. Hillier said.

The sight of hundreds of red-clad troop supporters at the Canadian National Exhibition was “a visible show, a tangible show of support for our men and women in uniform,” he said.

Whoa ... in a city of three million people, literally "hundreds" turned out for a teary show of patriotism. It makes the heart purely swell with pride, don't it?

On the bright side, I'm guessing there were no long lines for the Porta-Johns.

3 comments:

Scotian said...

I seem to recall hearing they were expecting thousands to show at the rally, including on the news this morning. I guess they must have misspoken...

M@ said...

And just think, with the number of OPP and RCMP infiltrators in the crowd, the actual head count at the rally is even smaller.

Unknown said...

And don't forget that some of them were probably tourists, or Canadians from other parts of the country.

I had heard that they were expecting thousands. I even heard a figure of 25,000 at one point, though even if they were "only" expecting 10,000, the turnout was...low.