Andrew Raven
Northern News Services

Fort Simpson (Sep 16/05) - Sometime during the 1950s, the Queen of England bestowed a pair of ceremonial swords on the parents of long-time Fort Simpson resident Ken Brown.

Last week, five decades after the gesture, Brown donated the silver-plated sabres to the Fort Simpson cadet corps.

"Things like that just sit in the closet and get dusty," Brown said. "I felt the cadets needed a beacon of some kind."

The former troop organizer, who suffers from terminal cancer, was unable to attend the hand-over ceremony Tuesday evening at the Seven Spruce golf club.

Area cadet commander John Hazenberg called the swords "wonderful".

"On behalf of everyone here, I would like to thank Ken Brown for these sabres," Hazenberg said during the ceremony that also saw resident Diane Porter enshrined as a unit instructor.

"They will have a treasured place with the cadet corps."

With numbers dwindling in recent years, Brown hoped the swords - each about three feet of shimmering silver - would inspire another wave of cadets.

"The cadet program is an important one," said Brown, a former teacher and justice of the peace.