Federal Retires member Nancy Payne is this year’s Silver Cross Mother. Nancy is pictured here with Prime Minister Mark Carney and Deputy of the Governor General and Chief Justice of Canada Richard Wagner. Photo: Dave Chan
Cpl. Randy Payne was in Afghanistan for fewer than three months when he was killed while serving as a member of the military police’s close protection team. Randy was the only member of his party of four who didn’t die immediately when a roadside bomb struck the military G-Wagon they were driving while returning to Kandahar Airfield from an operating base. He was airlifted to a hospital in Kandahar.
Years later, Randy’s father David and older brother Chris were able to visit the hospital where their loved one succumbed to his injuries, but Nancy Payne, Randy’s mother, chose not to go to Kandahar when she was invited. Nancy prefers to do her grieving and remembering in Canada and on Remembrance Day, she was honoured as the nation’s Silver Cross Mother. She placed a wreath at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on behalf of all military mothers who’ve lost a son or daughter in the military service of Canada.
Nancy remembers getting the call telling her she was nominated as Silver Cross Mother.
“I was shocked — dumbfounded — that I, of all people, was asked to represent the nation,” Nancy says. “It's a very humbling honour. It’s bittersweet, but it's a tremendous honour, for sure.”
The Silver Cross Mother is chosen each year by the Royal Canadian Legion and is called on to perform duties honouring the fallen from all conflicts for the remainder of the year.
The devastating news
Nancy was home alone in Ennismore, Ont., on April 22, 2006, when she received the call from Randy’s boss in Wainwright, Alta., where Randy was stationed before he was sent to Afghanistan.
“It was 3:00 in the morning,” she recalls. “The phone rings. I’m sound asleep, so it takes me a minute to realize [it’s the phone.] It was Randy's boss in Wainwright. He said ‘I have some information to give you on your son Randy in Afghanistan.’ Well, right away, I knew that something had happened. I thought maybe an accident, but I never really thought of what did happen. It was not nice being alone for that [news.]”
She called her sister who came over to console her because her husband happened to be in Wainwright visiting Randy’s wife, Jody, and their young children, Jasmine, seven, and Tristan, five. Jody and David had also received a call in the middle of the night and were planning to call Nancy in the morning. Nancy, David and Jody are all close — Jody calls them “Mom” and “Dad” — so if this tragedy had to happen, Nancy was happy that David could be there when Jody received the devastating news.
“If anyone was to be there with her at that time, it was David,” she says.
Today, Nancy and David live in Lansdowne, Ont., and Jody lives nearby in Mallorytown. Jody and Randy’s children are now in their 20s. Tristan is a combat engineer in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) based in Petawawa, Ont., while Jasmine is a personal support worker living in Brockville. Jasmine has a son named Tommy.
“Tommy is a year-and-a-half old,” Nancy says. “Sometimes he gets these expressions on his face — he makes this little scowl — and he reminds us a lot of Randy. It’s wonderful.”
Nancy and David’s son Chris also served in the military for 19 years and now lives in Ottawa with his family. He attended Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa with Nancy and David, while Jody planned to attend a service near her home.
Remembering Randy
“Randy was a character, he was good-looking — he was a charmer,” his mother says. “He was very athletic and did well in school — he didn't have to study. He was very active in hockey — he was the captain of the Junior B hockey team in Gananoque for two to three years. He said he'd play hockey as long as he could walk or skate. When he was younger, he played two, sometimes three games on a Saturday if [a team] needed a player. Everyone in Gananoque knew him. He was very popular.”
Randy studied law security at Algonquin College and then joined the CAF as a member of the military police.
“The military was his forte,” Nancy says, adding that both she and David have family members who were in the military. David served for 30 years, with stints in London, Petawawa, Kingston and Germany. And when their son Chris was serving, he also did a tour in Afghanistan, something that put fear in his mother at the time, given that she’d already lost one of her only two sons.
Randy was a devoted father and husband and is remembered by the award for athletic and scholastic achievement Nancy presents at his former secondary school. The Corporal Randy Payne Memorial Bridge in Gananoque is also named for him.
Nancy is pleased her son is remembered in these ways.
“Never forget what they did for us,” she says of all of Canada’s fallen soldiers. "They gave their lives, we can’t forget that… we have what we have because of them.”