Lieutenant-General Al Meinzinger, commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and Chief Warrant Officer Denis Gaudreault, RCAF command chief warrant officer, recently visited personnel deployed with the Air Task Force-Romania, part of Operation Reassurance, at Mihail Kogӑlniceanu Airbase.
The RCAF's Honorary Colonel Loreena McKennitt joined the RCAF Command Team on their visit. While there, on December 14, 2019, Lieutenant-General Meinzinger presented her with her Canadian Forces Decoration (CD), representing 12 years of service—with a good record of conduct—as an honorary colonel.
Honorary Colonel McKennitt, an internationally known singer-songwriter, was appointed as honorary colonel of the Royal Canadian Air Force in September 2014. Before that, she served as honorary colonel of 435 Transport and Rescue Squadron, located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, from August 2006 to October 2013. She reached her 12 years of service in June 2019.
“I accepted this role in 2006,” she said in a speech to her fellow honorary colonels during her tenure as honorary colonel of 435 Squadron, “largely inspired by the sentiment that democracy does not thrive as a spectator sport; I believe that if we care about the democracy in which we live, we should all do our part to preserve it. By being an honorary colonel, one can become, even in small ways, a conduit of reflection and communication between the civilian population, our [Canadian Armed Forces'] personnel and the political…
Continue Reading This Article At The Canadian Armed Forces Website
