Veterans gathered in Ottawa on Thursday to protest pending closures of nine Veterans Affairs offices across Canada, including two offices in the Maritimes.

Glace Bay, N.S. resident Alfie Burt says he watched online with pride as his fellow veterans rallied in Ottawa.

“It was awesome, it really was,” says Burt, who served in Bosnia, Cyprus and Afghanistan. “It was people there saying everything that I’ve been screaming inside for the last several months.”

Since leaving the military in 2000, Burt has relied on his local office in Sydney for help with things like filling out forms.

He says the federal government’s plan to close nine offices by February, including those in Sydney and Charlottetown, will make even simple tasks much harder.

Veteran Blair MacIvor says he feels like an unwritten code is being broken.

“No matter what you do, your country’s going to look after you. No matter what happens, you and your family will be taken care of,” says MacIvor. “And not to mention names, but Harper and his lackeys have thrown that out the window.”

Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino said in a statement that the closures are an effort to keep up with the changing demographic of veterans.

He says they will still have access to home visits from nurses and case managers and, thanks to a new partnership with Service Canada, they will be able to go to 600 Service Canada offices across the country for help.

But MacIvor, a peer counsellor for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, says it’s not enough. His concern about the well-being of fellow veterans is echoed by his national union president.

“The ones that suffer from PTSD need face-to-face contact, human relationships,” says Yvan Thaubette, national president of the Union of Veterans Affairs. “They won’t get that when offices close. They’ll have to call a 1-866 number.

Nova Scotia Liberal MP Mark Eyking says he is concerned about the 14 jobs that would be lost at the Sydney office and the idea of elderly veterans trying to access services over the phone or online.

“Living off low-income, probably don’t even have Internet services, and you tell them they’ve got to contact their government that they defended over the Internet?” says Eyking.

For those who couldn’t make it to Ottawa, another rally is planned at the Sydney Veterans Affairs office for Remembrance Day weekend.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Ryan MacDonald