CALGARY - Out of the darkness of their daughter's death in Afghanistan a year ago, the family of Capt. Nicola Goddard has found some light to shine in the country of her birth.
Goddard died last May 17 in a grenade attack by Taliban insurgents in the war-torn country's Panjwaii district. A member of the 1st Regiment of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, she was Canada's first female combat soldier to die in battle. To date, 54 Canadian soldiers have lost their lives on the Afghanistan mission.
The young captain was described as an outstanding leader and caring friend by her comrades and as a loving daughter by her parents.
Wednesday would have been her 27th birthday.
"In a perfect world, we'd obviously just prefer to be sitting down and cutting a cake,'' said Tim Goddard as he and his wife, Sally, launched an aid project in Papua New Guinea to honour their daughter.
Under the program, solar-powered lighting systems will replace hazardous kerosene lamps in nearly 2,000 first-aid posts across the island nation. In a country close to the equator, it is dark 12 hours a day -- each and every day -- which makes the gift unique.
"We decided that it would be better to do it on her birthday rather than her death day,'' said Sally Goddard.
"We want to remember. We don't want to wallow and if we can make this a positive outcome ... (if) we can help a country, then something good is coming out of this (her daughter's death). Because there's not a heck of a lot else that's coming out of it that's good.''
The Goddards met and married in Papua New Guinea, an impoverished country off the northeast coast of Australia, while they were working as teachers with community leaders building new schools. Nicola was born there and lived there until she was three.
It's a project that Nicola would have approved of, say the Goddards, and makes the first birthday without her a little easier to get through.
"It's bittersweet, obviously. If things had been different, this would be a very different day, but you can't change what's happened, right?'' said her father.
"How do you make the best of it? How do you find something positive in something so awful? I think of the other 53 people and their families, and every day of the year there's somebody going through this.''
The Goddards were in Papua New Guinea when it was just achieving independence from Australia. In a country where 80 per cent of its six million people live in rural areas, the solar lights will make a major difference, said Evan Paki, Papua New Guinea's ambassador to North America.
"A lot of the aid posts operate simply from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. If somebody comes at 6 p.m., they would say `Sorry,' because there are no lighting fixtures to administer medical treatment,'' he said.
"I'm sure that she (Nicola) would have wanted to go back if she had remained alive today. I think it's very fitting that we honour a legacy and try to achieve a part of a dream by launching this project.''
With the Canadian death toll continuing to rise in Afghanistan, the Goddards hope the government makes an informed decision when it comes time to decide whether to extend Canada's tour of duty there past 2009.
But whatever that decision, a kinship with the families of other soldiers who have died in the line of duty has made something very clear to the Goddards.
"There's not been one set of parents or friends of the fallen soldiers who has not believed, as we believed, and Nicola believed, that they were doing the right thing and they were there doing good work,'' said Tim Goddard, who has met many other grieving parents across the country.
"It's the club you don't want to be in and you can't volunteer to be part of it. It's your kids that get you in it.''
The Light Up the World Foundation also has projects in the Peruvian Amazon, refugee camps for tsunami victims in Sri Lanka and a presence in villages on the borders of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.