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The following eulogy was delivered in Washington Wednesday by former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney at the state funeral of president George H.W. Bush:

Do you remember where you were the summer you left your teenage years behind and turned 20?

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I was working as a labourer in my hometown in northern Quebec, trying to make enough money to finance my years at law school. It was a tough job but I was safe and secure and had the added benefit of my mother’s home cooking every night.

On Sept. 2, 1944 — as we have just heard — 20-year-old Lt. George Bush was preparing to attack Japanese war installations in the Pacific. He was part of a courageous generation of young Americans who led the charge — against overwhelming odds — in the historic and bloody battle for supremacy in the Pacific against the colossal military might of Imperial Japan.

That’s what George Bush did the summer he turned 20.

Many men of differing talents and skills have served as president and many more will do so as the decades unfold, bringing new strength and glory to these United States of America. And 50 or 100 years from now, as historians review the accomplishments and context of all who have served as president, I believe it will be said that, in the life of this country — which is in my judgment, the greatest democratic republic that God has ever placed on the face of this Earth — no occupant of the Oval Office was more courageous, more principled and more honourable than George Herbert Walker Bush.