SLIMY SLIMY SLIMY Canadians!!!! ------------MAGOO

More medals up for sale

By IAN ROBERTSON - TORONTO SUN



The war medals of Brigadier-General Dollard Menard, one of Canada's most distinguished soldiers, are shown in Montreal. (CP PHOTO/Paul Chiasson) A family's decision to auction a Quebec war hero's medals prompted a retired general to call for the federal government to help families properly dispose of such battle honours. "There's going to be more and more of these cases, as World War II and Korean War veterans are going to be passing away," retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie said in an interview.

Commenting on the pending sale in Montreal of late Brig.-Gen. Dollard Menard's medals, which include a Distinguished Service Order, one rank below the coveted Victoria Cross, he said any type of blanket protection for such awards "should come from the government."

MacKenzie sympathized with the Menard family's frustration in not getting the national war museum or any regimental museums to buy the Dieppe hero's medals. The museum in Ottawa offered them a receipt for tax purposes.

But, he said, "I don't think it would be possible to capture the public's interest the way you folks did with the Victoria Cross. There's got to be something unique about it -- like a VC."

The Sun collected more than $100,000 to help the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion Association buy the VC awarded to World War II paratrooper Fred Topham. His family got the $300,000 needed to stop the medal from being sold to a private overseas collector.

Scott Taylor, a Sun contributor and publisher of the military magazine Esprit de Corps, fears directors of the Menard estate were driven to seek publicity before selling the medals by the success of the VC .

"It's crass for them to sell them off," he said from Ottawa. "I think in this case they've seen the value of the VC. It's a form of holding patriotism for ransom to say they might be sold off to someone in another country,"

Billed as a collection honouring "Canada's most decorated soldier," the medals will be sold by Empire Auctions from Jan. 23-27 ******I hardly ever agree with Scott Taylor but in this instance he is bang on! These people are money grubbing slime that should be holding onto the medals and treating them with the honour they deserve, not auctioning it off to the highest bidder. Imagine the disgrace this man would be feeling right now if he realised all his relatives were thinking of their pockets and minimizing his actions.******

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