Ontario calls on Ottawa to award North Bay-area veteran the Victoria Cross

The fight to award Nipissing veteran Pte. Jess Larochelle with the Victoria Cross has taken a major step forward, garnering support from Premier Doug Ford.

The fight to award Nipissing veteran Pte. Jess Larochelle with the Victoria Cross has taken a major step forward, garnering support from Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

The Ontario government is formally calling on Ottawa to create an independent military honours review board to re-examine cases where evidence suggests a veteran should be awarded the Victoria Cross.

Part of this push is to upgrade Larochelle, a northern Ontario Afghanistan veteran, to the highest medal of valour that Canada can bestow.

“Every major military organization or branch association has all agreed this should happen -- the Royal Canadian Legion has agreed,” veteran and Larochelle family friend Mike Harrison told CTV News.

Harrison spoke with Ford on the phone last week about using his voice at the Ontario Legislature to lobby the federal government to create the review board.

Offered their help

Harrison said the premier and Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli immediately offered their help and support in bringing the motion to Queen’s Park.

“We made our way down and sat in the gallery with other Afghanistan veterans and it was really moving,” he said.

The motion calls on Ottawa to establish a third-party military honours review board to take a second look at cases, including Larochelle’s, where evidence suggests they should be awarded the Victoria Cross.

“For the men and women who served, war was not a story. It was a reality,” Fedeli read out Thursday morning in the Ontario legislature.

Larochelle was gravely wounded in Afghanistan in 2006 while manning an observation post when the Taliban attacked with rocket-powered grenades, killing two in his company.

Stood his ground

During the battle, he was knocked unconscious and had a broken vertebra in his neck and back. He also suffered a detached retina and a blown eardrum.

Despite his injuries, Larochelle stood his ground and mounted a counteroffensive, leaving his bunker and firing an M72 rocket launcher directly into the force that was attacking, exposing himself dozens of times to enemy fire.

He held off about 40 enemy troops to help save his injured comrades.

After returning home from the war, he never fully recovered. He died in 2023 at the age of 40.

Since then, community members and local veterans have been pushing to have him awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously.

“Jess is a hero to myself and thousands of other Canadian veterans,” Harrison said.

The Victoria Cross was created in 1856 by Queen Victoria to recognize soldiers during the Crimean War. A total of 99 Canadians have been awarded the medal since its creation.

In 1993, Canada created its own Victoria Cross medal, which has never been awarded.

It is the country’s highest military honour and has not been awarded in Canada since the end of the Second World War.

“In the case of Pte. Larochelle, there’s no doubt -- there’s no doubt that he met that standard,” Fedeli said.

Larochelle was awarded the Star of Military Valour in 2007, Canada’s second-highest military honour. A petition to the federal government to upgrade the medal was signed by more than 16,500 Canadians.

It will be read out in the House of Commons on April 15 by Nipissing-Timiskaming MP Pauline Rochefort.

Harrison plans to be in Ottawa that day with other veterans.

“Our heroes from wars after the Second World War deserve recognition,” he said.

The hope, Harrison said, is that the petition will convince the federal government to fully acknowledge sacrifices made by soldiers like Larochelle -- and grant them the honour they deserve, in life and in death.