The morning light filtered through stained glass windows as families gathered in a Montreal hall last Saturday. They came to honor three Quebec men who crossed an ocean to fight in someone else’s war. Two of them never made it home.
Jean-Francois Ratelle was thirty-eight when he died on Ukrainian soil in 2024. The Joliette native had traveled thousands of kilometers from his hometown. Emile-Antoine Roy-Sirois, a Montrealer, was just thirty-one when he fell in July 2022. The war had barely started when he gave his life.
I’ve covered many ceremonies in this city over the years. This one felt different. The weight of loss hung heavy in the air. Families stood where their sons and brothers should have been standing. They accepted medals on behalf of men who made choices most of us cannot fathom.
The Ukrainian Canadian Sacrifice Medal recognizes Canadians killed or wounded serving with Ukraine’s armed forces. Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. That makes this conflict more than four years old now. The war grinds on while Montreal continues its daily rhythms of work and metro commutes.
Marie-France Sirois accepted her son’s medal with grace I cannot imagine possessing. “There’s no words to say how proud I am,” she said. What do you say when your child dies fighting for principles you raised him to believe in? Pride and grief become inseparable twins.
Denis Perrier stood among the honored, one of the fortunate ones who survived. He was fifty-five when he made his decision to go. Most men his age think about retirement planning or weekend cottage trips. Perrier thought about obligation and chose differently.
“So I saw that war can destroy family and child kill people,” Perrier explained. His words carried the weight of someone who witnessed horrors firsthand. He was injured during his deployment and spent ten days in a Ukrainian hospital. He came back changed, as all soldiers do.
Walking through Montreal’s neighborhoods, you’d never know some of our own are fighting overseas. The bistros stay busy on Saint-Laurent. Couples stroll through Old Montreal taking selfies. Life continues its normal patterns while volunteers from our province serve in trenches continents away.
Nobody knows exactly how many Quebec soldiers currently fight in Ukraine. The nature of volunteer foreign service makes tracking impossible. These men and women don’t deploy through official Canadian military channels. They make individual decisions to join Ukraine’s armed forces directly.
Michael Shwec serves as president of the Quebec Provincial Council of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. He expressed gratitude for volunteers who risked everything for a nation not technically their own. “The values of Ukrainians and the values of Quebecers are very, very similar,” Shwec said during the ceremony.
He’s right about those shared values. Quebec has always had a complicated relationship with questions of identity and sovereignty. We understand what it means to fight for cultural survival. We know the importance of language and self-determination.
“They value life, they value family, and they are willing to fight for it,” Shwec continued. Those words resonated in a room full of people who had sacrificed family members for exactly those principles.
Montreal’s Ukrainian community runs deep, particularly in neighborhoods like Rosemont and Villeray. I’ve reported on their cultural festivals and church gatherings for years. Since February 2022, those gatherings have taken on new urgency. What was cultural preservation became active support for a homeland under siege.
The ceremony Saturday brought together different strands of Montreal’s identity. French-speaking Quebecers and Ukrainian-Canadians shared space and grief. Military tradition met civilian solidarity. Official recognition met private mourning.
Ratelle’s family received his medal knowing he died believing in something larger than himself. Roy-Sirois’s mother held her son’s honor close to her heart. Perrier stood as living proof that some survive these choices, though survival carries its own burdens.
These weren’t professional soldiers following orders from Ottawa. They were volunteers who saw injustice and decided they couldn’t stay home. That makes their sacrifice simultaneously more remarkable and more tragic. Nobody forced them to go. Conscience alone drove their decisions.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress has worked to ensure these volunteers receive recognition for their service. The Sacrifice Medal represents official acknowledgment of contributions made outside traditional military structures. It says their service mattered, their sacrifices counted, their choices had meaning.
February will mark five years since Russia’s invasion began. The war that was supposed to last weeks has become a grinding conflict of attrition. Ukrainian forces continue defending their territory while volunteers from around the world join their ranks.
Quebec’s contribution to that effort remains largely invisible to most residents here. We’re far more likely to discuss provincial politics or the Canadiens’ latest loss than foreign volunteers from our own communities. Saturday’s ceremony pulled back that curtain briefly.
The families left carrying medals and memories. They returned to homes missing the people who should be there. Montreal continued its weekend rhythms around them, largely unaware of the recognition ceremony happening in their midst.
I left thinking about the distance between comfort and conviction. Most of us, myself included, watch wars on screens from safe distances. We express opinions over coffee and move on with our days. Ratelle, Roy-Sirois, and Perrier chose differently. They closed that distance between belief and action.
Their service raises uncomfortable questions about obligation and sacrifice. What do we owe to strangers facing tyranny? When does moral conviction demand more than social media posts and charitable donations? These three Quebec men answered those questions with their presence on foreign battlefields.
Montreal will remember them now, at least officially. Their names join the long history of Quebecers who served in conflicts far from home. The medals their families hold represent courage most of us will never need to summon.
