{"id":15675,"date":"2025-12-07T14:46:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T17:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/12\/07\/sask-army-veteran-among-prospects-for-canadas-highest-military-medal\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T14:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T17:46:07","slug":"sask-army-veteran-among-prospects-for-canadas-highest-military-medal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/12\/07\/sask-army-veteran-among-prospects-for-canadas-highest-military-medal\/","title":{"rendered":"Sask. army veteran among prospects for Canada\u2019s highest military medal"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>SaskatchewanThe retired master warrant officer is being considered to receive the Canadian Victoria Cross for his service in Afghanistan.The Canadian Victoria Cross was created in 1993 and has never been awardedAlex Kozroski  \u00b7 CBC News  \u00b7 Posted: Dec 07, 2025 6:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 3 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 5 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.William MacDonald, a retired master warrant officer from Regina, attended a session of the Saskatchewan legislature on Dec. 3, when a motion to support awarding the Canadian Victoria Cross for the first time passed unanimously. (Will Draper\/CBC)A Saskatchewan veteran is being considered as a possible recipient of the highest honour in the Canadian Armed Forces.The Canadian version of the Victoria Cross was first created in 1993, to honour veterans in the same way the original Victoria Cross did during the two world wars.Since then, every country in the Commonwealth, except Canada, has awarded the decoration for exceptional valour in an armed conflict.Now, 25 of Canada\u2019s most highly-decorated veterans are being considered as potential recipients of the award. Lumsden-Morse MLA Blaine McLeod, who serves as the provincial military liaison, said the legislature carried a unanimous motion on Dec. 4 supporting the efforts of a committee pressing for a review of the files of people who have been nominated by peers and superior officers.One of them is William MacDonald of Regina, who retired as a master warrant officer in 2015.Born in North Bay, Ont. in 1973, MacDonald moved to Regina with his family before he was a year old and joined the Royal Regina Rifles while still in high school. He stayed with the regiment until 1994, graduating from Sheldon Williams Collegiate.\u201cMy mom was a single parent and didn\u2019t have a lot of money, and she was kind of harassing me to get a job,\u201d MacDonald recalled in an interview with CBC Saskatchewan.The Canadian Victoria Cross was created in 1993 and is different from the British Victoria Cross. The Canadian gallantry award has yet to be issued. (Government of Canada )\u201cI didn\u2019t know anything about [the military]like nothing. And I thought, well, it sounds pretty cool. You get to be outside and shoot guns and they give you money for it. So why the hell not, right?\u201dFrom the reserves, MacDonald transferred to the regular army\u2019s Princess Patricia\u2019s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI).He served with the regiment for more than 20 years, deploying multiple times and receiving the Star of Military Valour, which is the second-highest decoration in the Canadian system of honours, for his service in Afghanistan.William MacDonald previously received the Star of Military Valour (left), the second-highest decoration for a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. (Will Draper\/CBC)On Sept. 3, 2006, he found himself in the midst of what would be later called the Battle of Panjwaii, attached to a platoon at the last minute as a part of Operation Medusa, one of the deadliest operations in recent Canadian military history.Prior to engagement, a soldier driving an armoured vehicle was killed by a roadside bomb, leaving MacDonald\u2019s platoon to complete the assault on foot.\u201cWhat essentially happened was there were 14 Canadians,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI was one of them and we did a dismounted assault on an enemy stronghold, not really expecting the volume of enemy fighters that we ran into, and it turned out there were between 200 and 250 of them.\u201dThe stronghold was referred to as \u201cthe white school,\u201d a Taliban position surrounded by marijuana fields.\u201cThey had us basically surrounded on three sides and our only way out was back the way we came, which was about 300 meters of flat, open terrain. So there was no way to escape,\u201d MacDonald said.In the ensuing battle, three Canadian soldiers died and another seven were wounded. MacDonald said only four of them were left in fighting condition, and the midday heat reached 60 C.\u201cI did what sort of came naturally and what my training led me into, which was to shoot, move, communicate and medicate,\u201d he said.\u201cI wanted to quit. It was overwhelming. It was a really challenging scenario \u2026 They looked at me and they were like, \u2018Everybody else is wounded. You have to be in charge now.\u2019 I couldn\u2019t allow myself to quit and to let those soldiers down,\u201d he said.\u201dIt\u2019s one of those moments that you look back on time and time again, if you\u2019re fortunate enough, as I was, to survive that experience, and ask yourself: what could you do differently? Did you do the right things?\u201dJames Sinclair, a retired corporal now farming near Regina Beach, said he met MacDonald on MacDonald\u2019s first day of service and they became close friends.Retired corporal James Sinclair also served in Afghanistan, and is an advocate for awarding the Canadian Victoria Cross. (Will Draper\/CBC)\u201cMy whole reason for trying to get this initiative going forward is that our nation was paid for with blood,\u201d Sinclair said of the effort to award the Canadian Victoria Cross for the first time.\u201cThose values, they\u2019re not just words. They mean something. As a soldier, you\u2019ve got to really honour those values. If we\u2019re not going to reward the highest weight of the nation and say, \u2018Thank you for what you\u2019ve done to give us our ability to be a sovereign nation,\u2019 then everything else kind of slips away.\u201dHis friend is a humble man, Sinclair said.\u201cHe\u2019s not going to brag about himself, but he\u2019ll carry that honour and he will do the right things with it \u2026 Whoever gets awarded the Victoria Cross, and I hope it\u2019s Willy, as long as somebody out there gets it, it\u2019s a win for Canada.\u201dOntario MP Pauline Rochefort will introduce a petition to create an independent review committee in the House of Commons in March, advancing the possibility of awarding the honour to one or more exceptional veterans.\u201cIf it does happen and they go, \u2018Hey, Willy, you\u2019re going to be awarded the Victoria Cross,\u2019 what do I do then?\u201d MacDonald said.\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a playbook for that. So it\u2019s humbling and it\u2019s a little bit scary at the same time \u2026 For me, it\u2019s about making sure that those memories don\u2019t get lost to time, and that those names don\u2019t get forgotten.\u201dABOUT THE AUTHORAlex Kozroski is a reporter with CBC News in Regina. He has also worked as a reporter for Golden West Broadcasting in Swift Current, Sask.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SaskatchewanThe retired master warrant officer is being considered to receive the Canadian Victoria Cross for his service in Afghanistan.The Canadian Victoria Cross was created in 1993 and has never been awardedAlex Kozroski \u00b7 CBC News \u00b7 Posted: Dec 07, 2025 6:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 3 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 5 minutesThe audio [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15676,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,123,1],"tags":[116,122],"class_list":["post-15675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-indigenous","category-saskatchewan","category-uncategorized","tag-indigenous","tag-saskatchewan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}