Hello everyone this is Joseph Green, the one offering the book for sale.
I would first like to express my sincere appreciation for your service to our nation and deepest gratitude. It is people like you that serve that highlight why we have the finest armed forces in the world, or so I believe. I am honoured to have been involved with this project since its inception beginning with lining all of 97th street between 118th ave and 111ave with yellow ribbons when the "Friendly Fire" incident happened, and will continue to respect and honour the intent of the cause. I would like to first like to address the topic of the "Stolen Book" set that was entrusted to Anne McClellan. Today they were found and I was contacted by Colonel Stogran informing me to that point. It was very distressing for me personally due in part for three reasons. First, he was the CO and he deserves a book to commemorate the event where he lost men under his command. He was slated to receive Set # 00002. Set #00001 was given to the Regiment and now as I am told resides in the Museum of the Regiments of which I am fundamentally honoured. Set# 00003-Set#00015 were allocated to the four ladies who lost their loves ones, Marley Leger, Jocelyn Van Sloten, Miranda Boutilier and Jody Carter and eight were given to the eight soldiers that were injured in the bombing and I considered it as a gift from Canada for their sacrifice and loss. It was important to me that they receive a copy. Set#00015 was allocated for Maj Mark Campbell someone I now call a friend
. Set #00016 was given to the book editor for her tireless work in editing over 9000 condolence entries. For the record, I do not even have a copy for myself of the final version. I own the black set which is photographed on the site www.hooler.com and in that contains all the original letters submitted by various MP's, ministers and government officials and I hope will someday reside in the National War Museum housed in the same frame as my flag.
Those books come to represent a sacred piece of Canadian history and when I say that I do not in any way shape or form want to diminish the recent loss of Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. NOT BY ANY MEANS! The sacrifices that have been made and will continue to be made will be honoured and echoed into the collective memory of all of Canada and this book comes to represent a small moment in time that our military was deployed to aid in the hunt for members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Last summer when I presented the finished sets to the military, it represented a massive investment of my resources into this project and for that I have no complaints as it was my choice and I would have done it again in a heartbeat. My father suggested that we provide the afore mentioned minister Col Stogran's set so that a member of the government could see a final copy of this book set. While enroute to him, it was "lost". It fundamentally angered me that something like that happened especially after all the work that I put into it. As it has been explained to me, the book has been found and all this could have been chalked up to something as simple as a book sitting in a mail room. I will not care to speculate and I have since changed the site to reflect that. I consider that matter now closed.
I know that many who read this do not know me and are not aware that I am a student at Emily Carr in Vancouver and as such am living the "starving student" lifestyle and my reason for the deadline of August 7th and the time to manufacture these sets as school begins again in September. Even with my status as a student, I do not and will not accept anything in the form of monetary compensation for this book. It is my contribution to creating this "system".
It was my dream from the outset to create a mechanism that could be employed to create scholarships in the names of all the soldiers killed while in the service to Canada, and have this funded entirely by these book sets with all profits put into trust with scholarships being funded from the interest accumulated so that in 100 years from now, the Cpl Dyer or Capt Goddard scholarship would still be around. I approached the Royal Canadian Legion, initially received support for my proposal at the provincial command level for Proposal 3, and in fact my pitch to them made them cry (never happened before in a presentation), but Dominion Command eventually pulled their support for unknown reasons. You can view the presentation that I made to them at:
www.hooler.com/legion/legion-prop.exe
This is a flash based presentation published to an exe file.
I tried my best to contact publishing companies to no success. It was my intention to place in the hands of any publishing company that wanted to run with this the full rights to this book as I swore and oath renouncing all rights to profit, an oath I still maintain. In fact when I swore that oath, Colonel Wayne Eyre and Jocelyn VanSloten held Set #00000 while I swore out my oath. That is a moment I will never forget and I consider Col Eyre a friend. Anyone that wants to take this book and run with it only needs to contact me and I would be willing to have a discussion with them if they were sincere provided that all profits are dedicated to a noble cause. I was not prepared to sell this book until recently because I was not able to create the Non Profit Organization and Charity for this purpose as I just spent over two and a half full time years designing this and my energies were depleted as I am sure you can appreciate. I was not prepared to publish any more unless I was able to find a worthy recipient that would fall in line to the original mandate and that is when I asked for Colonel Stogran's advice. He recommended www.ideaccess.org, a wonderful organization that promotes literature and women's rights in the middle east. I thought about it and accepted and here we are today.
I realize that none of you know me and in today's world trust is a fleeting thing. I live by the mandate never trust more than you can afford to lose. But I am also a handshake man. I am making this book available to anyone that wishes a copy because it is truly a work of art. I still can't believe I made that to be quite honest. I have made it available because people said that they wanted it and many people have expressed an interest in securing a copy and I will know how many I have to make by August 7th. It is my plan that on Sept 11th at sundown in Vancouver on a beach to present what proceeds I have, along with the final copy of this book, to representatives of Ideaccess.org what I was able to generate in the names of all Canadian soldiers that have died while in service to Canada while serving in Afghanistan. Anyone can do the math. If this project generated sales that equalled the amount of forces that served there, the funds that I could present would be staggering. I will so it at sundown and I will consider this chapter closed forever as I will never offer another First Edition set ever again to the general public.
I realize the price tag is indeed steep, but that represents my hard cost of publishing these books one at a time. There are over 200 full colour pages, its leather bound with gold leaf and its boxed, in other words its expensive by virtue alone. This book is not a paper back, this book is something you give to your grandchildren and can certainly last hundreds of years and the book binding masters at: www.bookbindery.ca oversee its manufacturing at every step. Printing is expensive and as a student, I hope you all realize that producing the amount of sets that I did came at a high cost to me and it is my little contribution. I am not in the military, but I hope you can at least understand that I honour it and the sacrifices made by so many. I am not complaining, but I am trying to put you people into context of who I am.
Indeed, no one needs to buy it and that is ok by me as the people that matter have the sets. By the way, my name is not Mr. Hooler, its Joseph Green and I run www.hooler.com.
A message to GAP, my track record if investigated shows no unknowns as I have offered full disclosure to anyone.
I have done everything I can to commemorate this and I know its a number of years late, but I consider my commitment fulfilled.
So far, I have one order and he is Ex 2-Commando and an ex Patricia.
I would like to close by saying thank you everyone for engaging in meaningful discourse in regards to this subject. I wish you all the very best that Canada has to offer and I hope you realize that there are some Canadians that truly value your service and I am honoured to consider myself one of them.
I wanted to also let you know, the 3 PPCLI flag that was presented to me as thanks, is scheduled to go up on STS-115 this August on Space Shuttle Atlantis. It was supposed to be Endeavour, but I suppose they changed it. It is a profound honour to be involved with having the entire earth fly under the flag of 3 PPCLI. The Canadian Space Agency has stated that they would like to fly the whole crew of the shuttle up to Edmonton to present the flag back to the Regiment at an Oilers game. How cool would that be?
If anyone wants to ask any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at: hoolerprime"@"hotmail.com. Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope it provides some degree of clarification.
Thank you and God Bless Canada.
Joseph Green
www.hooler.com
