The family of Capt. Nichola Goddard gathered in Cobourg Thursday morning to remember the 26-year-old soldier, who was killed in Afghanistan in May 2006.
Capt. Goddard’s name is the latest to be engraved on a plaque that stands above Hwy. 401, along a stretch known as the Highway of Heroes.
“The fact that people still remember her is phenomenal,” her father, Tim Goddard, said. “And the fact that people are willing to make these physical manifestations.”
Goddard was the first combat-certified female Canadian soldier to be killed in action and the 16th soldier to die in Afghanistan.
Her plaque, which can be found on Ontario Street, is one of 12 similar markers that overlooks the route Canadian soldiers killed in action take, travelling from Trenton to Toronto.
The plaques are part of a True Patriot Love Foundation initiative.
“The Highway of Heroes project is about commemorating those that have paid the ultimate sacrifice,” True Patriot Love CEO Bronwen Evans said.
Goddard’s family travelled from their home in P.E.I. for the ceremony. Her father said they wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
Nichola, he said, would have been touched by the gesture.
“I think that wherever she is, she’s laughing, that this would happen,” he said.