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Veterans Affairs Canada launched a campaign on Friday to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy in the Second World War by sending a pair of combat boots on a cross-country journey.

After a ceremony and the unveiling of a poster, the black boots were carried by military personnel onto a train leaving Vancouver’s central train station.

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The boots are expected to arrive in Halifax on June 3, with stops along the way in several cities for similar ceremonies.

They’ll be displayed at the June 6 ceremony in Halifax to commemorate D-Day in 1944, the day Canadian, British and American troops stormed onto the beaches of France.

It’s the same train trip that Second World War veteran George Chow, 97, took more than 75 years ago, when he was two months shy of his 19th birthday.

“It was August and school was out and I ran into my buddy and he said, ‘Hey George, you got to join, we’re going to go to France, we’re going to Paris, we’re going to go to London.’ We just wanted an adventure,” he said after the ceremony. “We weren’t thinking of being patriotic or anything like that.”