Over the past week, I have attended seven different events in which we have honoured the advance of freedom. Six were events related to Remembrance Day. Another was a celebration of the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

For me, these events have great meaning. They go to the core of my involvement in public service. To me, the core Canadian values of freedom, democracy, and opportunity are precious - indeed all too scarce in the world - and worthy of efforts to support them.

I grew up in a home of Estonian Canadians who came to this country seeking freedom. My grandfather was an agronomist in Estonia, and my grandmother a lawyer there in the 1920's when not too many women took on such a career.

But with World War II, Estonia saw successive waves of Soviet, Nazi, and then again Soviet occupation. My family fled across a storm-tossed Baltic Sea to Sweden and ultimately chose Canada. It was a choice of where to find freedom, democracy, hope and opportunity.

Many of those in the family who stayed, faced an unpleasant fate. They were executed at gunpoint, bludgeoned to death in their beds, or simply worked to death in Stalin's frozen Siberian Gulag camps.

In Canada, my grandfather agronomist went to work in a paper factory in Riverdale, and his wife the lawyer worked on the order desk at Sears. And in this country, they found the freedom, hope and opportunity they were seeking.

I grew up on a steady diet of stories of the close calls with death my mother and grandparents faced. I learned that our comfortable Canadian freedom was precious indeed. I was reminded daily, that I had an obligation to value and support freedom, and to do what I could to strengthen it.

With those roots, it is not surprising, the Remembrance Day has always held great meaning to me.

Canadians have - for a century or more - travelled oceans away, to fight on foreign soils, to defeat tyranny, evil ideologies, and to give freedom to millions they did not know. Together with a handful of other countries sharing similar values, and a selfless commitment to humanity, Canadians have advanced the cause of freedom across our planet.

It has come at a terrible price. Over 100,000 dead, and many more scarred for life. But the cost has been paid willingly, and with pride.

From the bloody battles of Flanders, to the triumph no other country could win at Vimy Ridge, our country forged its nationhood on the battlefields of World War I.

From the tragic failed raid at Dieppe, to the triumphant landings at Juno Beach, and the hard-fought liberations of The Netherlands and Italy, World War II, saw Canadians defeat unthinkable evil.

Through the Korean conflict, countless peace-keeping and peace-making missions, to today's sacrifices in Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers have given their best to advance the values of freedom we cherish, and make our world a better place.

As I stood with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa this past week, we reflected on the sacrifices made by Canadians and others to advance freedom. We noted that the path of freedom has not been smooth.

There has been no shortage of those willing to plunge the world into chaos, to end that freedom for reasons of twisted ideology. We will no doubt see more of that in the future.

But thanks to the courage and sacrifice of a few - foremost among them, Canadians who have always given more that any believed possible - that march of freedom has advanced. The world I live in is immeasurably superior to that my grandfather experienced.

That is something we remember with sadness, and celebrate with pride. It is Canada's gift to mankind.