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Veterans motorcyle unit raises funds for charity

3rd Herd

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The usual disclaimer:
Veterans motorcyle unit raises funds for charity: Patriotic group aids more than 600 charities in its work
KINGSTON (Jul 28, 2007)

Paul (Trapper) Cane, a retired paratrooper left nearly crippled by a drop gone wrong, has owned his 2007 Harley Davidson and sidecar for three weeks.

His odometer just ticked past 10,000 kilometres.

"I spend as much time as I can in the saddle,'' said Cane, whose surname took on a cruel irony after he collided in the air with a fellow paratrooper in Petawawa. The 250-pound Cane, a sergeant with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry at the time, snapped both his ankles and nearly his back when he smacked into the ground. He now relies on a cane to walk.

Cane spent two years in hospital while doctors performed 18 reconstructive surgeries on his legs and back, one of which was to amputate his right foot.

A tug on his right pant leg reveals a prosthetic foot and the type of grizzly scars one would incur in battle, not during training.

"Lying on your back for two years gives you a lot of time to think,'' said Cane. "All I could think about was getting back on my bike.''

It's now 10 years later and Cane, who was told he'd likely never walk, let alone bike, again, can barely stay off his new hog.

In the last three weeks, Cane has travelled throughout Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces, visiting and riding with about a dozen satellite units of the uniquely patriotic motorcycle club he co-founded in Kingston four years ago.

"What you see here is going on in 32 communities across Canada,'' said Cane, pointing out the window from inside a local Tim Hortons at a parking lot full of leather-clad bikers all wearing the same green-and-black patch.

"We served our country. Now we're serving our community,'' Cane said.

Cane is the national president of the Canadian Army Veterans Motorcycle Unit, known to members simply as the CAV.

Started by Cane and three other former soldiers (two ex-PPCLI and two ex-Van Doos) in Kingston in 2003, the CAV now has 3,000 members in 32 units across the country, with units starting up in Nashville, Tenn., Tel Aviv, Israel, Warwickshire, England and Belfast, Ireland.

In the group's brief four-year existence, Cane says CAV riders have raised more than $2 million for 627 charities and causes.

Essentially, its mandate is to provide financial support to charities, moral support to each other and the Armed Forces, and to have fun.

"Look around,'' Cane said. "Look at what's going on. Everyone's connecting with each other. Everyone's having a great time. That's what it's all about.''

About half of the total CAV ridership are ex-military: men and women like Cane who served in uniform, mostly in United Nations peacekeeping missions.

Another quarter are active soldiers, some of whom are currently in Afghanistan.

The remaining quarter are men and women who have never served a day in uniform.

They're civilians, like Kingston's Sherry Downes, who ride alongside the veterans as a show of support.

"I've sure never been over there, but they treat me just as if I'd done two tours of Afghanistan,'' said Downes, whose road name is Shadow. "We're a family.''

For Brenda Buffett, who has had to endure several long stretches at home alone while her husband was serving overseas, the CAV means a sympathetic ear from other spouses who have been in her situation.

"We know it could have been us on that tarmac instead of the Tara Dawes of the world,'' said Buffett, who goes by Breen on the road, referring to the widow of Kingston's Captain Matthew Dawe, killed July 4 in Afghanistan.

It started with a ride for prostate cancer in Kingston 2003. Cane, who by this time was relying on several medications to keep him out of a wheelchair, showed up alone, not expecting the meeting that would change his life.

Yannick Lebrun also showed up. Like Cane, Lebrun was forced into early retirement from the Armed Forces due to injury. Also like Cane, Lebrun loved to ride.

"He saw my PPCLI and Airborne Regiment patches and he knew,'' Cane said. "The military experience bonds us all and that bond lasts long after you turn in your uniform. I could see in his eyes what he wanted; he wanted healing.''

Cane and Lebrun recruited two more former soldiers and the foursome began showing up at charity rides in the Kingston area. Eventually, they were noticed.

"People would say, 'Hey, there are those army guys' or 'Look, it's the Green Riders,''' Cane recalls. "I thought, 'Sweet Christ, we better come up with our own name before we get stuck with that one.' "

So began the CAV. Along with the name came a website, a 29-page constitution and a logo. Lebrun put up the site, Cane drafted the constitution, but the logo is a relic.

The image of a dispatch rider wearing a helmet pulling back on a '40s-era motorcycle that now graces thousands of black leather vests across Canada once appeared on Second World War recruiting posters, Cane said. More than 700,000 motorcycles were produced for allied dispatch riders during the Second World War, according to the DND website.

After getting the image embroidered in 20-by-25-centimetre patches, Cane and his cohorts slapped them on their backs and rode. By the end of their first month, the CAV had 200 members.

Lebrun's website was also causing a stir. By the second month, www.thecav.ca was registering 10,000 hits a day and Cane was fielding hundreds of e-mails from veterans wanting to set up chapters in their own communities.

"We were national by month three,'' Cane said.

But with expansion came conflicts. The CAV's ever-increasing visibility caught the eyes of several biker gangs and law-enforcement agencies.

Something had to be done to differentiate.

The first step was to eliminate the words "bikers,'' "colours'' and "chapters'' from the CAV lexicon. Instead, CAV riders became "motorcyclists,'' who wear "crests'' and ride in "units.''

"(Those terms) are associated with the biker outlaw world,'' Cane said. "We ride to honour the Armed Forces.''

Crests include the CAV logo, the Canadian flag and individual unit flags. The exception is for Quebec units. They wear the fleur-de-lys instead of the maple leaf.

Units are named after Canadian battle honours rather than the cities they are in. This is to avoid more confusion with outlaw gangs, who often wear city names on their jackets to denote drug or organized crime territory. The Kingston unit, for example, is called Vimy. Some other units are Ypres (Calgary) and Paschendaele (Gagetown).

Cane says the CAV's few brushes with biker gangs have been amicable.

"They respect us in an odd way,'' he said. "They know that it's because of us that they ride free.''

The Vimy unit, with 88 members, is the CAV's largest. President Bill (Drifter) Truman has in fact organized an executive committee to help carry out the work of organizing and administering the unit.

Truman, a native Kingstonian who spent 33 years with the Royal Canadian Regiment, says unlike most CAV riders, he was reluctant to join.

"I was out,'' Truman said. "I had been with them my whole life. But it's probably one of the best things that's ever happened to me.''

The smallest unit is Scheldt in Yellowknife (named for a month-long battle in northern Belgium in the Second World War) with only four members.

"I think they ride snowmobiles 11 months of the year,'' Cane joked. "I actually just talked to them. They said there's enough mosquitoes up there to pick up a bike and fly away with it.''

Four years after that first ride in Kingston, the CAV now enjoys good standing in their communities. They've become a fixture at repatriation ceremonies at CFB Trenton, where the bodies of slain soldiers first land on their return to Canada.

Dozens of CAV riders, mainly from Vimy and Juno (based in Trenton) attend each ceremony and line the street with their bikes as a show of support to the victims' families.

"We have guys over there in Afghanistan,'' Truman said. "They are there to see them off when they leave, and we are here to greet them when they arrive.''

For Cane, life on the road has become a grind. As national president, he travels from coast to coast every summer visiting as many units as he can, a goal he has imposed on himself.

He needs painkillers to ride (the effects of his devastating parachute fall will never go away) and often camps in a small tent to save on hotel costs.

"Sometimes it kills me. It's painful,'' he says.

"But I put on my artificial parts, take the pill for the pain, ride into some new town and all of a sudden, I'm an 18-year-old G.I. with a rifle in my hands ready to get shipped out. Then I go back to my tent, take all my artificial parts off, try to get some sleep and get up and do it all over again.

"But I absolutely love it.''



 
Journeyman said:
For those interested, here's the link to The CAV website.

Did you miss it in the article??   >:D

You must be getting old; or your eyesight bad!!

I picked it out easily ... and have already been in cruisin' for chaps pics ...
 
ArmyVern said:
Did you miss it in the article??   >:D

You must be getting old; or your eyesight bad!!

I picked it out easily ... and have already been in cruisin' for chaps pics ...

Uh.........no.......I saw it right away. I was just highlighting it...ya, that's it....I was just highlighting it for those without such keen eyesight

:-[


dammit, where's that dunce cap smilie?
 
Journeyman said:
Uh.........no.......I saw it right away. I was just highlighting it...ya, that's it....I was just highlighting it for those without such keen eyesight
:-[ 

hangin.gif

dammit, where's that dunce cap smilie?

You -----> 
bek063.gif
 
bek106.gif


;D

Me ------> 
littleangel.gif


teu26.gif


 
Intresting group, Glad to see them doing such good stuff.
 
3rd,
  Thanks for posting the article. Trapper departed the Gagetown CAV unit only last week after we raised $2,000 for the Legion and Wounded Warriors Fund. We were very hapy to have him ride with us down east with all our units:
Paaschendaele - Gagetown
Det Saint John
Det Moncton
Battle of the Atlantic - Halifax
Det Greenwood
Det Cape Breton
Beaumont Hamel - Newfoundland

  If you ride or want to just support the activities of the CAV please visit the CAV web site or contact your local unit. For the Atlantic region you can contact myself.

Rags
2 CAV President
AKA 3rd Horesman (see you on the road)
Strenght and Honour (our motto)
 
3rd Horseman said:
3rd,
  Thanks for posting the article.  
Rags
2 CAV President
AKA 3rd Horesman (see you on the road)
Strenght and Honour (our motto)
No problem 3rd, I figured you have not got a laptop mounted on your scoot yet. ;D
Excellent news on the other funding issue, well done. :salute:
 
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