Private Garrett Chidley, A Walk to Remember, and Langley's ties to Afghanistan and Korea
A Langley Secondary graduate killed in Kandahar in 2009, a reservist with close ties to Aldergrove, two Langley teenagers who raised sponsors for a tree for each of the fallen, and a stone from South Korea that says thank you.
Garrett Chidley was born in Cambridge, Ontario, but he grew up in Langley, and in 2006 he graduated from Langley Secondary School. That December, a few days before Christmas, he enlisted in Vancouver. He joined the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and, three years later, he was in Kandahar.
On December 30, 2009, the armoured vehicle Private Chidley was riding in struck a roadside bomb near Kandahar City. He was 21. Three other Canadian soldiers were killed with him, along with Michelle Lang, a Calgary Herald journalist who had come to cover the mission. He was brought home and buried at Victory Memorial Park, and his name is on page 235 of the In the Service of Canada Book of Remembrance.
His family lived in Langley. So did the people who decided he wouldn’t be forgotten.
A Walk to Remember
Elizabeth Pratt went to Brookswood Secondary with Garrett’s brother. From January 2010, a few weeks after he was killed, she and her brother Michael, both teenagers, set out through their group Langley Youth for the Fallen with a goal: a tree for every Canadian who had died in the mission in Afghanistan. That meant 158 soldiers and four civilians.
They found the sponsors. On November 11, 2012, A Walk to Remember was dedicated at the Derek Doubleday Arboretum on Fraser Highway: a path lined with deodar cedars, a tree that grows in Afghanistan, and a steel ribbon carrying the names. Rotary paid for two lookouts. In 2014 the Pratts received the Minister of Veterans Affairs Commendation.
If you’ve never walked it, go. It’s quiet, it’s beautiful in November, and the names go on for longer than you expect.
Master Corporal Colin Bason
Two years before Garrett Chidley, on July 4, 2007, the Fraser Valley lost Master Corporal Colin Bason, a reservist with the Royal Westminster Regiment who lived in Abbotsford and had many close connections to Aldergrove. He was 28. His RG-31 armoured vehicle struck a roadside bomb about 20 kilometres southwest of Kandahar City. The Royal Westminster Regiment is the same regiment whose name Aldergrove’s army cadet corps carries today.
The stone from Gapyeong
A few steps away in the arboretum is a very different memorial. In January 2019, Gapyeong County in South Korea gave the Township a carved stone to thank Canada for April 23 and 24, 1951, when the 2nd Battalion, PPCLI held the Kapyong valley. The plaque says the battalion “gave up not one foot of ground.” Langley’s was the first of six Gapyeong stones in Canada, and on April 17, 2026, the 75th anniversary of the battle was marked beside it.
It’s worth noticing the thread that runs through these memorials. The Patricias held Kapyong in 1951. Garrett Chidley was a Patricia in 2009. And this October, another Langley Secondary graduate serving with the regiment, Private Hayden Lykkemark, was one of four soldiers killed in a fire during training at CFB Wainwright. We wrote about Hayden and the three who died with him.
Visit
21177 Fraser Highway, Langley, BCMurrayville, on the Nicomekl River (Township)
The Derek Doubleday Arboretum is on Fraser Highway in Langley. A Walk to Remember and the Gapyeong Stone are both on the grounds, along with an oak grown from the oaks of Vimy Ridge. Our guide to Langley’s cenotaphs and memorials covers every memorial in the City and the Township.
We will remember them.