Between football practice, schoolwork and all the other things a busy teenager has going on, Liam Ray took time to compose his own song for a young soldier he never knew.
“It was tough to start,” Ray said in an interview after a football practice at Belmont Secondary in Langford. “But then it all just started to flow out of me. It was very calming, liberating. I’m very proud of this one.” The project inspires students, who are given an information package on soldiers, to dig deep and pour their emotions over the keys.
Almost all of Armour’s 30 students have composed music for the Music for Veterans Project, including a five-year-old. They’ve performed at Parliament in Ottawa before veterans, world embassies and national defence staff, and at Remembrance Day services in the capital region.