Lieutenant-General Al Meinzinger, commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and Chief Warrant Officer Denis Gaudreault, RCAF command chief warrant officer, recently visited personnel deployed with the Air Task Force-Romania, part of Operation Reassurance, at Mihail Kogӑlniceanu Airbase.

The RCAF’s Honorary Colonel Loreena McKennitt joined the RCAF Command Team on their visit. While there, on December 14, 2019, Lieutenant-General Meinzinger presented her with her Canadian Forces Decoration (CD), representing 12 years of service—with a good record of conduct—as an honorary colonel.

Honorary Colonel McKennitt, an internationally known singer-songwriter, was appointed as honorary colonel of the Royal Canadian Air Force in September 2014. Before that, she served as honorary colonel of 435 Transport and Rescue Squadron, located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, from August 2006 to October 2013. She reached her 12 years of service in June 2019.

“I accepted this role in 2006,” she said during her tenure as honorary colonel of 435 Squadron, “largely inspired by the sentiment that democracy does not thrive as a spectator sport . . .  Read the rest of the article . . .