Battalion, with the 2nd Battalion receiving its colours in 1960. In the late 1960s, as part of a reorganization of the Canadian Army, it was decided to disband The Canadian Guards. The 1st Battalion was disbanded on 1 October 1968, and the 2nd Battalion was reduced to nil strength on 6 July 1970 (its personnel and equipment going to the new 3rd Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment). The month before, a final Trooping of the Colour parade in front of Governor General Roland Michener took place on Parliament Hill. The role of Household Troops then reverted to the two surviving militia units, which resumed their separate identities in 1976. Some members were reassigned to The Canadian Airborne Regiment. Controversy At the time, the regiment was criticized for being irrelevant and a show unit. Lieutenant Colonel J. Thomas Bowie, an 83-year-old veteran of the foot guards, claimed that the guards "have no history, no tradition, no nothing." At a 1952 convention of the Royal Canadian Legion, the guards were branded as "an affront and disgrace". Julian Ferguson, a Member of the House of Commons for Simcoe North as well as a World War I recipient of the Military Cross, attacked the Guards as having "never fought and never defeated". He then shook his finger at the then Minister of National Defence Brooke Claxton, and exclaimed "Shame on you!". Colonel Strome Galloway, who commanded the Guards' 4th Battalion from 1955 to 1957 and was the first and last regimental lieutenant-colonel, believed that the disbanding of the Guards was a "political decision" by powerful "francophone" elements. "Our crime," Galloway wrote, "was that we were 'too British' in uniform and character to pass muster with the Francophone hierarchy which dominated the Defence Department at the time. The Unification program was the official excuse, but the program itself was partly a gimmick to 'Americanize' the Canadian forces and eliminate, as far as possible, the British traditions of the past." Characteristics and duties The regiment was originally raised to be similar to the five regiments of the British Foot Guards: the Grenadier Guards, Coldstream Guards, Scots Guards, Irish Guards and Welsh Guards. The Canadian Guards wore a white-over-red plume on the left side of their bearskins. Ceremonial dress uniform was similar to that worn by The Canadian Grenadier Guards, with the Canadian version of the "Home Service" Dress tunic being worn in the summer and Atholl-grey