New Brunswick’s Gisele Michaud named Silver Cross mother for 2014

OTTAWA – The Royal Canadian Legion says a New Brunswick woman whose son died of wounds suffered in Afghanistan will be this year’s Silver Cross mother at the national Remembrance Day ceremony.

Gisele Michaud of Edmundston, N.B., will place a wreath at the National War Memorial on behalf of all bereaved mothers of soldiers killed on duty.

Her youngest son, Master Cpl. Charles-Philippe Michaud of the Royal 22e Regiment, was mortally wounded after stepping on an improvised explosive device while on patrol southwest of Kandahar in June 2009.

He was flown back to a hospital in Quebec City, but died on July 4.

The Silver Cross, more formally the Memorial Cross, was instituted on Dec. 1, 1919 as a memento of loss.

For more than 60 years, the Legion has chosen a Silver Cross mother to take part in the national ceremony.