At least one egg was hurled the night before the ceremony, when four cadets from the 68th Niagara and Welland Regiment were guarding the cenotaph overnight, say two women who witnessed the incident. Nobody was hit, but the moment has parents and officers shaking their heads.
“I was actually amazed at how ignorant people can be,” said Mary Novarro, the sergeant-at-arms for Royal Canadian Legion Branch 138 Merritton, who was there when the egg was thrown.
She said she saw a car go by and chuck a single egg in the cenotaph’s direction. She said it hit a sidewalk and shot towards a nearby building.
“I don’t think they realized we’re not supporting the wars that happened,” she said. “We’re trying to remember people who died during the wars.”
Nancy Monych, who heads up the cadet group’s parent committee, said she saw more than one egg thrown. She said she was picking up pieces of shell the next morning.
The cadets, she said, didn’t move. “Those kids stood there, at guard, heads down and didn’t move a muscle,” she said.
But she said some were rattled.
“They were really upset, actually. I cannot believe that anyone would come to a cenotaph and egg when they’re honouring fallen soldiers and those who are serving.”
Monych said it’s the first time she has heard of it happening, “and I’m there all the time.”
Monych and Novarro said they didn’t report the egging to police, but Niagara Regional Police spokesman Derek Watson said it would likely qualify as a mischief.
The cadets kept on standing guard through the incident, said Capt. Karen Baschuk, the cadet corps’s commanding officer. She said she was told of the egging after it happened.
“My kids rise up to the occasion. It doesn’t falter them at all,” she said.
She figured the egging was an isolated incident and said it may have been thrown at the adults in the area. But she nevertheless chafed at the fact the egg was thrown at all.
“I think it’s atrocious,” she said. “People need to know that could have been their kid out there on Remembrance Day.”
http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/2012/11/14/eggs-thrown-has-cadets-guard-cenotaph