Along the Highway: Landscapes of National Mourning in Canada

Abstract

Between 2002 and 2011, 158 Canadian Forces soldiers died while serving in Afghanistan and were repatriated via Canadian Forces Base Trenton to the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario in Toronto for autopsy. The repatriation route took their bodies along Highway 401 in central Ontario, where thousands assembled on bridges above the highway to pay their respects. In this thesis, I detail the memorial landscape that developed around what came to be known as the Highway of Heroes, and I use this conception of the highway as a landscape to demonstrate the ways in which it participates in the ongoing remilitarization of Canada. Following the work of Judith Butler, I argue that the Highway of Heroes contributes to the production of a hierarchy of grievable subjects, and the act of memorializing soldiers is implicated in the erasure of other victims of state violence, including missing and murdered Indigenous women.