Honourable senators, the past is our inheritance, but with that comes a profound responsibility, the duties of trusteeship.

I rise today to pay tribute to an eloquent, caring and passionate trustee of our story. Dr. Tim Cook, the Chief Historian at the Canadian War Museum, a pre-eminent military researcher, an Order of Canada recipient, lost his battle with cancer at the far too early age of 54, but not before penning an amazing number of books, at least 20, that captured the stories of unbearable cruelty and loss, of bravery and pain and of the camaraderie and the victories of the men and women who served and defended this country and who died for it and whose spirit we constantly seek to replicate.

In The Secret History of Soldiers, he echoed the quiet admissions of surviving against all odds. He captured the true meaning of service in Vimy: The Battle and the Legend, and in The Fight for History, Tim reminded us all that a nation’s history — its story — is built on its past and always on the backs of those who were willing to risk it all for that nation and for the ideas at its core.

Tim Cook told the war fighters’ stories. He gave them names and faces and the all-too-often-denied status of heroes and nation builders that they had earned at their peril.

A wise man once said:

One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, to scratch a drawing . . . or keep a diary . . . .

And it’s because the value of the past is “. . . the very basis of civilization.”

But history is also “. . . a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and . . . we must impose some order upon it.” That is what Tim Cook did every single hour of his life.

And if history is to be not just a burden on our memories but an illumination of our souls, then, Tim, you always willingly shared and bared your soul through your words — and theirs — and reminded us of the humanity of war, not just the inhumanity that often comes with its prosecution.

So a profound thank you to you and your family and your fellow chroniclers of our beginnings as a nation. You will remain mentor to the many who will read you for generations to come.

You are a great friend to Canada, to the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces, and you gave voice to thousands, from the grave, from the battlefields and bridges, and from the cockpits.

Safe travels, sir. Sic itur ad astra — “Such is the pathway to the stars.”