What are you thinking about now as it relates to recovery and community healing, both for your community and CFB Wainwrights?

Well, I think the strength of a community is its ability to, first of all, respond to such an overwhelming crisis.

Again, a 20-bed hospital, there were stretchers, gurney beds in the waiting area of our little hospital.

So there's that initial response.

But now what I see is, again, the release of tears yesterday and You know, it will continue, I think, to ebb and flow.

And that's the way we will get it.

It's said over and over again for our community.

That bond... is special and unique and sometimes only understood by those who live it.

You must be both proud and certain that what could have been done was done as best as possible at your hospital, because from every report I've read, Mayor Pugh, People just rushed there, they did what they could, they moved the patients that needed to be moved as quickly as they could be, and they cared for the incoming wounded, and they just did it.

Yeah, absolutely, and I am proud of them every day.

The faith I have in the people who serve in our community and who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces is tremendous.

is immense.

I had an opportunity to, to attend the hospital yesterday for, for just a few moments.

And I saw many of my friends, you know, I've, I've got family that work there, people that we've shared this community our entire lives and so many individual stories and, and, and acts of compassion.

One, one of the people who, who works there I've known for a long time took me aside and, And she said, you know, Bruce, while they were under our care, we did not lose one of them.

That bond... is special and unique and sometimes only understood by those who live it.

What did you see there on the ground, uh, in the context of the response that you'll never forget?

forget?Well, the, the sheer volume, as you mentioned, so our Wainwright Hospital is, is staffed by nothing short of, of heroes, angels.

Um, but we're simply not equipped to handle an event like this.

So the response that came in, um, you know, like, again, hearing, watching STARS making multiple sorties, um, fixed, fixed-wing aircraft flying, um, injured members to, to Foothills in Calgary to, you know, Red Deer, Edmonton.

Uh, the Saskatchewan Health Authority, we saw ambulances coming from Saskatchewan.

We saw our friends in Vermilion, their fire department, um, came and occupied our Wainwright Fire Hall and were on call in the event that an event happened within our town and our team was out fighting the, that fire in, in the field.

So, you know, it, it almost sounds idyllic, um, how communities, like neighbors, friends, pull together, but, you know, that's exactly what we saw.

Uh, Mayor, what's your message to them and to the rest of Canada?

Where were you when, when you heard the news?

Uh, so I, I was just in, in my home.

You know, it was a, a typical Saturday, uh, here in Wainwright.

So but we'd heard the, the cannons firing, so of course the proximity between the base and our community is, is very close i- in so many ways.

And, uh, s- I know that they've been running a lot of courses through the base.

It's a training base.

And, uh, so there was lots of, of cannon fire and, you know, the sound of, of, of explosions and things like that happening.

People just stepping up in your community, doing whatever you, they can, you know, posting on Facebook, um, the, the, the, the pages where, you know, community members spend a lot of time and, and just expressing their feelings and doing whatever they can to step up and, uh, try to ease some of the wounds of your community.

Just talk a bit more about how close-knit those ties are.

Well, of course, I haven't had an opportunity to witness the connected nature between other military communities and their surrounding municipalities, but I use the term, you know, different fingers on the same hand.

Because of the proximity, because of the amount of housing that's on the base, because of the facilities in our community, we are, like, the level of dependence on each other is immense, so...

Base serving families, children come to our schools in Wainwright.

They attend our churches.

Of course, there are base chaplains.

Recreation facilities, they use our swimming pool and our ice rinks.

It's