By HEIDI GRZESINA

Staff Writer

The hearse with journalist Michelle Lang leaves CFB Trenton along Repatriation Row, en route to the coroner’s office, Toronto. Submitted photo

The street is lined with mourners, civilian and military, side by side, watching five flag-draped caskets somberly being removed from a military aircraft and shouldered to five waiting hearses.

The barb-wire-topped fence separating mourners from the five grieving families and dignitaries is a physical separation but the mourners' emotional response is so powerful you wonder if the five families can feel the warmest of embraces here, supporting them, respecting them and crying with them.

About 4 p.m., Dec. 30, 2009, in Afghanistan, a bomb blast caused by an improvised explosive device (IED), killed Sgt. George Miok, Sgt. Kirk Taylor, Cpl. Zackery McCormack, Pte. Garrett William Chidley and journalist Michelle Lang, of The Calgary Herald, bringing the number of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan to 138.

"A journalist was travelling with them to tell the story of what Canada's soldiers are doing in Afghanistan," says Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard. A Canadian civilian was also wounded, he says.

About 2 p.m., Jan. 3, 2010, the military aircraft arrives at Canadian Forces Base, Trenton, with our fallen heroes.

"This is the first time we've repatriated somebody that wasn't a Canadian Forces member, " says Repatriation Officer Captain Wayne Johnston.

"She [Lang] will be on the aircraft when it comes into Trenton and will be taken off the plane like she was a Canadian Forces member." Lang is the first to be removed from the aircraft. 

An award-winning journalist, she is the first Canadian member of the media to be killed in Afghanistan since 2002. 

"She was the kind of journalist you would want to have here. She was kind and decent and curious," says CBC reporter James Murray, who is stationed in Afghanistan. 

"After the hearses are loaded and they come out of the gate, headed for the Coroner's office in Toronto, we line the street out of respect for the soldiers and the families, because, you know, they paid the ultimate sacrifice," says Bill Truman, aka Drifter, of the Canadian Army Veteran Motorcycle Units (CAV). These CAV units have a team in Afghanistan who see the aircraft depart, along with units to meet their arrival in Trenton and in Toronto.

"You see everyone jumping around trying to keep warm here, but when you think of what they've been through, this is nothing. It's the least we can do as Canadians to show our respect."

"They're doing a wonderful job over there, and we just want them to know how much we appreciate what they're going through," says Truman of the Forces still serving in the southern Afghanistan areas of Kandahar and Kabul. Their numbers range between 2,500 and 2,830, according to the Government of Canada's website.

A motorcade of hearses followed by limousines filled with family members begins to emerge from the gates. The are greeted on both sides with mourners and supporters who hold their hands over their hearts. The veterans stand at attention and salute. There is silence as frozen tears fall to the ground.

"I would consider Michelle's death to be a tragic loss, as is any," says Joshua Grant-Young, second-year journalism-print student at Niagara College. 

"However, as journalists embedded in warzones, we should hypothetically assume that there will be a significant possibility of danger associated with the assignment. While a combat mission may have been a more controlled environment and would have focused on protecting potential civilian casualties. An IED is difficult to predict (especially on a road considered safe). It was tragic, but not necessarily avoidable, and a risk that a journalist should calculate before stepping into any crisis, which I imagine Michelle was  well aware of."