On a bitter, icy Canadian Sunday, the bodies of four soldiers and a journalist who died in Afghanistan returned home, as GTA citizens braved frigid cold to pay their respects.

The five coffins were unloaded on a minus-21C afternoon at CFB Trenton, where a piper's lament accompanied pallbearers carrying each casket to hearses, where family members and friends met their loved ones bodies as they returned to Canada.

Michael Louie, fiancé of slain Calgary Herald journalist Michelle Lang, carried a single red rose and wept openly as he approached the vehicle that held her body.

She died on Wednesday alongside Sgts. George Miok, 28, and Kirk Taylor, 28, Cpl. Zachery McCormack, 21, and Pte. Garrett Chidley, 21, when the armoured vehicle they were travelling in was struck by a roadside bomb on the outskirts of Kandahar city.

Governor General Michaëlle Jean, Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Gen. Walt Natynczyk, Canada's chief of defence staff, were also in Trenton.

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