MIlitary funeral brings 21-gun salute to Whitby tomorrow

An army veteran will be buried in Whitby tomorrow bringing full military honours to town, including a 21-gun salute.

Master Corporal Cameron Andrews, 31, is born in Port Perry and raised in Whitby. After a youth in scouts and cadets, he joined the Canadian Armed Forces at 22.

He served with Canada’s only tank corps, Lord Strathcona’s Horse (also known as the Royal Canadians) out in Edmonton. He later served a tour of duty in Latvia as part of NATO’s Operation Reassurance. This operation has run for ten years to deter Russian aggression in the Baltic states and Eastern Europe.

Of local note, Operation Reassurance is supported by military reconnaissance vehicles made in Oshawa. 

Following his tour, he joined the 408 Tactical Helicopter Squadron in Edmonton as a door gunner. In March last year, he was reassigned to work as an instructor at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.

His obituary reads “He was an excellent instructor on several armoured soldier courses, generating many new soldiers for the Canadian Army. On Aug. 2, while on leave in Florida, Andrews was killed in a car crash.

“Cameron leaves behind his parents and their spouses, his siblings and step-siblings and their partners, as well as grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and his nephew Logan. Also grieving are his many friends both civilian and military. He is especially missed by his loving girlfriend Lauren,” the obituary reads.

His funeral will be held General Sikorski Polish Veterans Hall, 1551 Stevenson Road North, Oshawa on August 29th. He’ll be interred at the Groveside Cemetery on Baldwin Street.

The funeral will include a 21-gun in during which, service members will fire several volleys. They are set to practise this morning before the full ceremony at 1 p.m. tomorrow. The funeral prompted a warning from Durham Police that the area will be full of military vehicles for the duration.

Lord Strathcona’s Horse

Andrews joined a distinguished company when he was assigned to Lord Strathcona’s Horse, a long-serving regiment founded in 1900 during the Boer War. It’s the last unit in the British Empire raised by a private lord, Donald Alexander Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona.

The unit has since served with distinction in the Boer War, the First and Second World Wars, and the Yugoslavian crisis. In the first conflict, then still a cavalry unit, Lord Strathcona’s Horse served out of Cape Town, South Africa, gaining renown as a scouting unit.

In the First World War, the unit initially served as infantry in the trenches of France, particularly on the Somme front. The unit later remounted and took part in “the last great cavalry charge” at the Battle of Moreuil Wood in 1918.

Three members of Lord Strathcona’s Horse revived the Victoria Cross, the Commonwealth’s highest military honour, for their action in these conflicts; Arthur Richardson, Frederick Harvey, and Gordon Flowerdew. The Victoria Cross is awarded for, “most conspicuous bravery, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice”

In the Second World War, now a tank unit, they were instrumental in the Italian Operation Goldflake campaign. The unit battled their way up the boot of Italy until 1945 when, now bloodied and proven as one of Canada’s top units, they shipped over to the Netherlands.

After the war, they were stationed in West Germany and later served in the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, Bosnia during the break-up of Yugolavia and the invasion of Afghanistan.