{"id":18454,"date":"2017-09-27T17:49:13","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T21:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=18454"},"modified":"2017-10-05T12:41:30","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T16:41:30","slug":"local-cadets-lead-in-our-international-warriors-at-invictus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/local-cadets-lead-in-our-international-warriors-at-invictus\/","title":{"rendered":"Local cadets lead in our international warriors at Invictus"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

They simply wanted to do their bit, but local cadets from St. Andrew\u2019s College took centre stage leading athletes from all around the world into the Air Canada Centre on Saturday night for the opening ceremonies of the 2017 Invictus Games.
\nThe Invictus Games, founded by Prince Harry to provide a world-class Olympics-style sporting event for injured and wounded servicemen and women from around the world, opened this past weekend, welcoming hundreds of athletes from 17 different nations.
\n\u201cIn the days ahead, I know many of you will be experiencing Invictus for the first time,\u201d Prince Harry told athletes on Saturday. \u201cI hope you will be ready. I hope you will be ready for some fierce competition. I hope you will see the meaning of teamwork which proves that anything is possible when we work together. I hope you\u2019re ready to see courage and determination that will inspire you to power through the challenges in your own life. I hope you\u2019re ready to see role models in action that any parent will want their children to look up to, and I hope you\u2019re ready to see lives change in front of your eyes.\u201d
\nWhile Prince Harry was addressing the wounded warriors, some of these sentiments had already been felt by members of the Aurora based St. Andrew\u2019s College Cadet Corps.
\nDressed in their distinctive kilted scarlet uniforms, cadets had the honour of leading the athletes from each nation into the arena, athletes who were loudly cheered on by a crowd of thousands, including not only Prince Harry, but Governor General David Johnston and his wife, Dr. Sharon Johnston, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, U.S. First Lady Melania Trump, and Premier Kathleen Wynne.
\n\u201cWhen we first heard Invictus was coming to Toronto it seemed like a natural fit,\u201d says Brian McCue, Commanding Officer of the SAC Cadet Corps. \u201cWith an emphasis on athletics, I thought this was a perfect, perfect match for our guys to get involved in some way.\u201d
\nEager to be a part of Invictus in any way they could, Mr. McCue began putting out feelers, contacting event organizers with a rundown of the 117-year history of the Corps, as well as SAC\u2019s emphasis on athletics.
\n\u201cIt was a simple reach-out to say, \u2018What can we do to help?\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cIn the end, there were some opportunities that came up and we could fill those roles very well.\u201d
\nThe Cadets ended up forming the honour guard while The Tenors sang the National Anthem and then, the ultimate honour, carrying the placards leading in the celebrated athletes of each nation.
\n\u201cOur guys got a chance to interact with the teams and meet the athletes, hear and understand some of the challenges these guys and girls have been through and it has been absolutely fantastic. There was so much excitement throughout the whole thing. We were in the middle of one of the largest productions going on in the country, the Prime Minister was 40 feet away, and Prince Harry was right over there. Sarah McLaughlin was standing right next to us waiting to go on and what was really remarkable about the energy of the athletes themselves and the positive feedback from everybody in the room.
\n\u201cYou could see our boys beaming with pride. It didn\u2019t matter what team they had. We were all one. It was an incredible feeling of unity and motivation. Everyone was here with common goals and it was just phenomenal. Our boys were just shocked but totally engaged in the whole thing. They were so proud to represent Canadian youth at this event and they were so proud to do their bit.\u201d
\nTheir bit, however, is not over yet.
\nWhile the cadets hope to attend Invictus events later this week, they will be back to participate in closing ceremonies on Saturday, meet team captains and hopefully Prince Harry too.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re there to support right through to the end and then we will help with the big send off for all the international teams,\u201d says Mr. McCue.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They simply wanted to do their bit, but local cadets from St. Andrew\u2019s College took centre stage leading …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/2017-09-28-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4NE","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-23 11:36:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}