Blog : Ragazou

 

By DIANE KOVEN, Ottawa Correspondent  ((CJN)

 

OTTAWA ? Stockwell Day, president of the Treasury Board and minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway, recently affirmed Canada's unwavering support for the State of Israel 

Sara Vered with Stockwell Day [Howard Kay photo]

He was speaking at the 2009 Jewish National Fund (JNF) Negev Dinner, held at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel on March 22.

 

Nearly 500 people packed the hotel's ballroom to honour local philanthropist Sara Vered, a native Israeli who fought in Israel's 1948 War of Independence.

 

 

 

Day praised Vered's war service. ?You did your duty, and you did it with remarkable courage,? he said.

 

He told the audience that Vered was ?one of the key people involved in the first trip that [former prime minister John] Diefenbaker took to Israel. He came home from that trip and his support for Israel never wavered.?

 

Day said he was moved by all he had seen during his most recent trip to Israel. He gave his assurance that Canada is firmly behind Israel. ?Any time Israel is threatened, for Canada neutrality will never be an option,? he said.

 

Sara and her husband, the late Zeev Vered, came to Canada as students to attend McGill University. Soon afterward, they moved to Ottawa, where they founded several companies and raised three sons, who are all involved in the family businesses.

 

As the Vereds' businesses prospered, they became volunteers in the community and major philanthropists, contributing to organizations in the Jewish and general communities in Ottawa, as well as to Israel.

 

Miriam Ziv, ambassador of Israel to Canada and two former Israeli ambassadors ? Alan Baker and David Sultan ? attended the dinner. Baker and Sultan came from Israel to support their friend. Numerous local politicians, dignitaries and business leaders were there as well.

 

Sara Vered spoke poignantly of her life in Israel. ?How thankful I am to my parents who left Europe to come to Palestine, hoping to build a new life,? she said. She told of her childhood in Jerusalem, of being taken out of high school to work in a wireless station, returning to school to write the final exam, and then being sent to the front, where she served during the War of Independence.

 

?By jeep, I travelled to the Negev and fell in love with this magnificent country' I learned that each individual and each nation should have a vision ? a vision that contributes to the welfare of humanity,? she said.

 

With the funds raised by the dinner, the  area around Ben-Gurion's Cabin in the Sara and Zeev Vered Pioneer Grounds will be landscaped. The cabin is a tourist attraction. The landscaping will include a path, benches and a variety of trees and shrubs symbolizing the former Israeli prime minister's vision of greening the desert.

 

A portion of the proceeds will also go to the Ran Kochva Lookout, developed by the JNF as a living memorial to Maj. Ran Kochva, a pilot killed in action during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Located in Nabi Yosha Forest in the Naftali Mountains, the location where Kochva's helicopter crashed, the lookout has views of the waters of the Hula Agamon.