An anguished outcry from military moms has prompted makers of an anti-war video to edit its most controversial snippet.
It was a surprisingly hasty retreat, coming less than 24 hours after makers of the video defiantly defended its contents.
But an onslaught from real-life military mothers prompted a change in the script delivered by an actress portraying one of them.
Swiftly chopped from the video was a part where the fictional mom stares blankly at the camera and says, after the death of her child in Afghanistan: "Having known that by giving life I'd be providing cannon fodder, I might never have had children."
The video triggered an angry reaction from politicians of various stripes, as well as from military families.
Military parents emerged to say they were proud of soldiers' work in Afghanistan, and disgusted by the video. One mother said that after watching the video she stared at a photo of her dead son and wept.
Makers of the video - a Quebec women's group - said it wasn't their intention to cause anyone anguish.
They said Friday that all they wanted to do was protest against the military policies of the Canadian government, like its role in Afghanistan and its multibillion-dollar purchase of fighter jets.
"The part that was really being called into question since [Thursday] where we're talking about cannon fodder, that really hurt people and that wasn't our intention," said Alexa Conradi, president of the Federation des femmes du Quebec. "That's why we decided to remove it."
Others wanted more than a simple edit.
The controversy led the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation to call for the women's group to return any public money it's received over the years.
The military mothers weren't satisfied, either.
The woman who led the charge against the video - with a Facebook page titled, "Soldiers aren't cannon fodder" - wants it pulled off the Internet.
Celine Lizotte said just seeing the face of the actress in that video will cause pain to military families who stumble across it.
"It will hurt. I don't want them to correct things by keeping the same video," Ms. Lizotte wrote on her Facebook page. "I want her to redo it completely. We shouldn't be associated with that."
Ms. Lizotte's son, Jonathan Couturier, was killed in Afghanistan as a member of the 2nd Battalion, Royal 22e Regiment, based in Valcartier, Que.
A native of the Quebec City suburb of Loretteville, the 23-year-old died in September, 2009, just outside Kandahar city.
Since 2001, more than 2,000 members of coalition forces have been killed in the Afghan conflict, 152 of whom were Canadian. There have also been an untold number of Afghan civilian casualties.