A Petawawa grocery store parking lot turned into a sea of crimson for the latest Red Friday rally in support of Canadian troops serving in Afghanistan -- including the latest three soldiers killed in action.
Families gathered with T-shirts, flags and posters, to energize soldiers from CFB Petawawa who are in the middle of deploying to Afghanistan, replacing troops from Shilo, Man.
The troops have certainly noticed.
Pte. Curtis Waldner, holding onto son Foxx tighter than normal in anticipation of next week's departure for Afghanistan, is excited but nervous.
"It's really nice to see poeple care, people are thinking about you, worried about you, proud of you," he told CTV Ottawa.
Red Fridays were started in the spring of 2006 by military spouses in the Upper Ottawa Valley. They soon spread across Canada.
"I think it's absolutely fabulous that we're just as strong now as we were in the beginning," said Lisa Miller, a military spouse who helped start the weekly tribute.
"It continues to get stronger and stronger."
The bodies of the three Canadian soldiers will return to their homeland on Saturday. Cpls. Andrew Grenon and Mike Seggie, and Pte. Chad Horn, were killed in a deadly ambush on Wednesday.
Their bodies are tentatively scheduled to arrive at CFB Trention at 6 p.m. A ramp ceremony, attended by thousands of soldiers, was held Thursday at the Kandahar airfield.
With a report from CTV Ottawa's Vanessa Lee
Click here to leave a message for CFB Petawawa soldiers deploying to Afghanistan
