Many residents of the Ontario cottage country community of Buckhorn loaded onto school buses and made the drive down to the Highway of Heroes to pay tribute to one of their own.

The remains of Toronto-born Cpl. Nick Bulger arrived Monday afternoon at CFB Trenton. He died last Friday after his armoured vehicle struck a roadside bomb in the Zhari district of Afghanistan's Kandahar province.

Bulger grew up near Peterborough. Dea Roberts described him as a man with a heart of gold. They describe him as a hero who knew the dangers of Afghanistan but who was still determined to serve his country.

"I had a dispute with him about joining the military. I said I didn't want him to go, but he said he was going to do it anyway," she said.

Bulger joined the military in 2000. His first tour of duty in Afghanistan began in February. He was due to come home on leave at the end of this month.

His post-military plan was to join Peterborough's fire department. Members of that department were out beside th Highway of Heroes at Port Hope to salute Bulger's motorcade as it passed heading eastward towards Toronto where an autopsy will be performed.

Bulger -- the 121st Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan -- leaves behind his wife Rebeka and daughters Brooklyn, 4, and Elizabeth, 2. Bulger is also survived by his mother Kathleen along with two younger brothers and a sister.

A member of the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Edmonton, Bulger also had friends in that northern prairie city.

Former co-workers at Edmonton's Funky Buddha said they will miss someone they regard as a generous guy.

"He's just a guy that would do anything for anybody," general manager David Barker told CTV News.

He had worked there as a doorman and bartender since 2005 with his younger brothers.

"They weren't in the military, but they looked right up to Nick," bar owner Lance Makutra said of the soldier's brothers.

"He was the older of the three. ... They were always asking him questions, life questions, so he was a very good man."

The Funky Buddha plans to hold a wake in Bulger's memory.

Remembering Michaud

At Kandahar Airfield on Monday, soldiers remembered Master Cpl. Charles-Philippe Michaud, 28, of Edmunston, N.B.

He died in a Quebec City hospital on Saturday. He had been critically injured by a landmine in southern Afghanistan almost two weeks earlier.

Michaud --  member of the 2nd Battalion, Royal 22nd Regiment was based at Valcartier, Que. -- had been on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. He is the 122nd Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan.

With a report from CTV Toronto's Tom Hayes and files from The Canadian Press