The Chilliwack
Progress Friday
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Football
Council
Derby
GW Graham Grizzlies head to the Subway Bowl on Saturday.
New Chilliwack council sworn in.
Day of the Derby in Chilliwack.
Y O U R C O M M U N I T Y N E W S PA P E R • F O U N D E D I N 1 8 9 1 • W W W. T H E P R O G R E S S . C O M • F R I D AY, D E C E M B E R 5 , 2 0 1 4
Farmers face brush with ‘high path’ avian flu Jennifer Feinberg The Progress
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Peter Braidwood of Chilliwack smiles as Jean-Christophe Fleury, Consul General of France, pins the French Légion d’Honneur award to his jacket during a special luncheon at the Vedder Legion on Wednesday. Ray Ward of Mission (right) was also awarded. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
France honours local paratroopers Greg Knill The Progress Seventy years ago Peter Braidwood was kneeling over the open bomb-bay hatch of a twin-engine Albemarle bomber. Below him the tufted waters of the English channel sped past at 170 mph. It was a little after midnight on June 6, 1944 – D-Day. Braidwood and his nine comrades were the very sharp tip of an invasion spear that would eventually total more than a quarter-million men. Their job was to drop behind the Normandy defences, secure a landing zone for the rest of their parachute battalion flying
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30 minutes behind, and cut the key bridges and roads leading to the frontline on a beach code-named Juno. With the windows of the plywood-sheathed bomber blacked out, the only place to see what was happening was through the open hatch in the floor. The Albemarle had long since dropped its last bomb. Obsolete almost from the start of the war, the aircraft was now used to transport paratroopers, or tow gliders into conflict. The idea was to fool the Germany defences into thinking the planes were simply part of another bombing raid heading inland. Instead, they carried members of the First Canadian
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Parachute Battalion. Braidwood was a 20-year-old kid from Manitoba. He had moved to Canada from Scotland in 1938 after the death of his parents. When war came, he left the farm where he worked and joined the Canadian Parachute Battalion, which was stationed at Shilo. They trained by jumping out of dirigibles, preparing for an invasion everyone knew was coming, but no one knew where. It was a massive undertaking and remains the largest seaborne invasion in history. But before the first troops hit the beach, thousands of American, British and Canadian paratroop-
ers were dropped from the night skies. Braidwood, with his hands on either side of the open hatch, watched as the water skimmed past 500 feet below. He had nearly 85 pounds of supplies strapped to his tiny frame. “I had to be pushed into the plane,” he says with a smile, his Scottish accent still evident after more than seven decades. He had no doubt he would survive the assault. But he remembers thinking, as he watched the water turn to beach, and then to the bristled fortifications of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, “What the hell am I doing here?” Continued: HONOUR/ p4
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Officials in the Fraser Valley are racing to quell the spread of avian flu. Four farms have been quarantined after a ‘high path’ strain of the H5 Avian influenza was detected this week. Two broiler farms in Chilliwack are among the four, and their locations have not been identified. It’s also not yet known how the virus touched down on the farms, but Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) reps are working to contain the strain of highly pathogenic virus, identified as H5N2. They’re trying to avoid a similar situation as the last time they faced a low-path strain of the virus. They’re so much further ahead now, said Ray Nickel, spokesman for the B.C. Poultry Association. “So much has changed,” he told The Progress. Improvements, from annual inspections, and mandatory bio security, to sampling and surveillance will make a difference. One of the key messages is a reminder to the public that “it’s an animal health issue, not a human health issue,” he said. Cook the food properly and it poses no risk to human health. In 2008, the B.C. agriculture ministry unveiled a new $14-million lab in Abbotsford. The lab would allow response to outbreaks “faster and more efficiently.” The Fraser Valley is “highly concentrated” as a region with poultry farming activity, as well as dairy operations. “That’s why we have these strategies in place,” Nickel said. How they handle visitors, service people and contractors on their farms have changed since the incidents. What he termed the “feather and dairy” group, meaning poultry and dairy farmers, in fact make up 40 per cent of the farm gate in the province.
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