A Sea of Red

I have to admit, being a participant in one of these Red Shirt Walk / Runs can be a blast. I was privileged to be able to participate in this one in Ottawa, and I'd be curious to see which other bloggers went as well.

The turnout was very impressive. The organizers budgeted for over 5000 participants, but I'm pretty sure we exceeded that amount by at least a grand. It's true that there were a lot of people from DND, but there were others from other government departments, all of whom had some connection, personal or otherwise, with our CF personnel overseas. (Hey, if they didn't, they wouldn't be walking out in this sultry weather, would they?)

The route itself was about 5 kilometres in total length, from the Corktown Bridge (or whatever they want to call the new footbridge across the canal), south along Colonel By, across the Pretoria, then north along Queen Elizabeth up to Wellington, and then west to the lawn of Parliament Hill. A good distance to cover on foot, I have to admit. A bit muggy out, and the skies were pretty nice for the whole event.

I'll say this much, the sight of thousands of red shirts on Parliament Hill is going to be impressive to the troops for whom this rally was meant. If nothing else, this rally does show that there is a military community in Ottawa, and that we do care about the people we send out there.