More than 300 people braved a bitter wind and freezing cold in downtown Edmonton Friday for a rally in support of Canadian troops in Afghanistan. The rally at Churchill Square is the first of what organizers promise will be weekly demonstrations dubbed Red Fridays.Rachel Lambert, who helped organize the event, says the soldiers in Afghanistan need to know Canadians care. "We have a lot of veteran military members who sign on the dotted line willing to do a job that many of us wouldn't do," she said. "We need to support them 100 per cent because, as I said, they're doing a job to protect our freedoms here at home, whether you want to believe that they can accomplish that somewhere else or not."
A choir of children dressed in red T-shirts opened the event with O Canada. A key speaker at the event was Master Cpl. Paul Franklin, who lost his legs in a suicide bomb attack. "When you are on a mission you don't have to think about how Canadians support us," he told the crowd. "We know that if we head out those gates, that no matter what, Canadians across this land support what we do."