Lest We Forget

Vancouver's 2010 Remembrance Day ceremony attracted an even larger crowd than usual to this year's event; it seems part of the tradition now, to see an increase in attendance each November 11.

The ceremony at the Cenotaph concludes with the remaining WWII veterans placing their single white roses with singular determination, in memory of those whose hair never got to grow as grey, whose children, and grandchildren, could not accompany them during this traditional gesture of remembrance.

We may sincerely say Thank You, but the words are like the raindrops also seemingly part of the fabric of this ceremony's tradition. They come, and they go. It's the memory of the gesture that tends to remain; the tender hand on the shoulder speaking more eloquently and casting a longer shadow on the mind than mere words could ever do. The gestures, and the contact that comes with them: these are what renew the shared hope that there may still be a better tomorrow.

We watch, and we can't help but wonder: was the sacrifice worth it? What promise, is there, for Peace?
As ever, the answer is everywhere around us, carried in the thoughtful eyes of the young.

Many are not yet old enough to read the names of those represented through the many wreaths laid in their memory. Still, their young minds, like their delicate hands, reach out to understand the deeper meaning to what they witnessed today. And Thank God, there are many who make a point to help them appreciate what these gestures are to mean to them.

"Say Thank You", they are coached by grateful parents, and the bashful smile that animates the child's grateful touch must surely bring a renewal of faith to the older hands that gently receive it. A renewal of faith through gratitude, and with it, a chance for Peace.



Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.

Remembrance Day, 2010

We haven't been writing much of late, and I'm off to the Cenotaph in few minutes. So I thought I'd just remember that there are countless signs, all about us, from your favorite free-wheeling blogs to innocent children, to all the fruits of a free-trading entrepreneurs, that are the legacy of those who fought in the wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries against the evils of totalitarianism. Here are a couple of photos I took last spring in Fort Langley, BC.

Giving Thanks On Remembrance Day

I was pleasantly surprised that of all the young people I work with at my new job, it was the most rebellious one who ventured out in acceptance of my invitation to spend part of our holiday attending the Remembrance Day ceremony at Victory Square in downtown Vancouver.

The idea of paying respect was new to them, they said as we chatted while we watched the gathering crowd. They had heard of this event before, but admitted they had never really paid much attention to it. As the ceremony unfolded I would occasionally glance in their direction to see a face staring in rapt attention at the ongoing ritual, eyes darting to the program in order to dutifully follow along when we would we welcomed to join the choir in song.

"What happens now", I was asked when the ceremony seemed to conclude. "Now we have the third parade", I said. "We saw the 'parade' of officials laying their wreaths and paying their respects, we're seeing the bands and branches of service parading past us now, and when they finish we all go down to the Cenotaph, to walk past and pay our individual respects. One of the ways we do this is to lay our red poppies on one of the wreaths that has personal meaning to us."

We watched parents reading aloud to their young children, in answer to curious little fingers pointing at one wreath or another; we watched teenage couples, men and women old and young circle around, then stop, and think, before depositing their poppies and moving on. One younger gentleman got down on bended knee, shut his eyes for a long moment before adding a red poppy to the growing number gathering around a particular memorial wreath in honor of recent sacrifice in Afghanistan. Almost on signal, the clouds let loose a brief sizzle of rain they had kept in abeyance throughout the morning, to mix with our tears.

What do you think of all this, I asked my young charge on our way out.

"Thanks for inviting me", came an uncharacteristically soft-spoken answer, and as I write this it occurs to me to add that this was the first time I had ever heard them say thank you for anything. The eyes looked into mine, then drifted up and away to someplace else, someplace within. "This was important for me to see. I'm gonna remember it."

And so should we all.

They shall grow not old,
as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
We will remember them.

We Will Remember Them.

Seeing The Unseen On Remembrance Day

Today we make the effort to remember, to honor and to show our gratitude for the sacrifices made by others, on our behalf.

As I write this I hear the rain falling outside the window, I see my wife getting her affairs in order for the day ahead, I touch the extra red poppy that gets propped beside the computer work station, and I remember all those who can no longer listen or see or touch the world they left behind.

It may be said that there will be two parades at the ceremony we're going to attend downtown. The city's memorial tribute ends with a proud procession of people of all ages, from aged veterans in wheelchairs at the front to young cadets marching under flags at the rear. This march spreads over a few city blocks, and it's a grand sight to see. But first will come another parade, as an ever-increasing number of representatives walk the short distance to the Cenotaph in order to place wreaths on behalf of their groups of fallen comrades.

They are there in place of thousands of others who can no longer be there themselves, and as they mount their wreaths at the base of the Cenotaph I always strain to imagine a picture of who they are representing, to try and see them, hear them, touch them in my mind's eye. We may be seeing the single steps of solitary veterans, reverently placing wreath after wreath, but with each passing year it becomes even more important to keep seeing those who never walk again, so that we all may stand here, today, at this ceremony. On this day their unseen steps echo far louder in my memory than even those of the brave souls marching alongside bands and banners at ceremony's end.


The true climax of Vancouver's Remembrance Day ceremony, however, doesn't conclude with the veterans parade; there's a final, humble and unofficial ritual that many of us stay to perform. We circle the Cenotaph, some with more personal purpose than others. They are searching for the individual wreath that serves to remind the world of their lost loved one, and when they see it, they pull the red poppy formerly carried in their collar and pin it to the memorial wreath, an annual embrace of commitment that their sacrifice has not been forgotten. I usually wait a few moments before making my own personal rounds to make my own personal tribute with my own red poppy; I've come to appreciate observing the appreciations expressed by my fellow Canadians, as their example keeps making it easier for me to see the unseen, to imagine the thousands present in spirit, their shadow made as real and palpable as that of the Cenotaph at the center of our attention on this day.


Thank You for your sacrifice, Godspeed to your families and may God Keep Canada, True Strong and Free.

Lest We Forget: a thought for Remembrance Day

"But there was many a man for whom the brief moment of exhilaration was followed by years of depression. Of the third or more of the expeditionary force that had returned wounded, many were incapacitated permanently, and although no country exceeded Canada in efforts to salvage the human wreckage of the war, the broken soldier became a familiar sight. Not only that, the spiritual wounds that many men received were as serious as the physical. Many old veterans found it hard to settle down again to hum-drum civil life, were hard to please or resentful of employers who had stayed comfortably at home. Civilians began to use the term "returned man" as signifying a difficult, unadjusted, barey respectable individual. That cut. It was a good number of years before authority officially admitted the situation and made provision for "burned out" veterans. The phrase was graphic and the condition behind it real enough: during the late `20's and early `30's the deaths of ex-service men in their forties were reported with inescapable frequency. The veternas had not been entirely re-absorbed into civil sociey by the beginning of the second World War, and the Veterans' Guard formed at that time enabled them to recapture, after a fashion, the days when, a generation before, they had really lived."

Arthur M. Lower, Colony to Nation. A History of Canada (1946), 459-60.

What we ask of our soldiers is often tragic, to live the rest of their lives with memories of great violence, of killing and watching their friends be maimed and killed. But humanity has yet to find a way to banish war as the ultimate means of checking unacceptable resentment and aggression. It remains for us to do what we can to support our troops, both those fighting today and those old men, the last survivors of the last century's great wars.

Remembering to keep faith

November is the time of year when Canadians proudly wear our red poppies, in memory of those fellow Canadians having made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf.

This year it seems that I can't so much as ride in an elevator without a well-meaning stranger making a gentle inquiry about the significance of our "red pins". I've been asked about it dozens and dozens of times. (I must have a welcoming face..!)

Not making this observation to complain, but to instead declare the opposite: I feel so lucky to have been given so many chances this year to explain the symbol's meaning to newcomers and visitors to our country. Remembrance Day, with its roots in gratitude, humility and faith, grows in importance and deepens in meaning as the years crawl ever onward. In our little corner of the country, attendance at the ceremony held in downtown Vancouver seems to attract an increasing number of participants each year. Sadly, there is also a matched growth in the number of commemorative wreaths graciously placed at the Cenotaph memorial... a sign that the more that is given to us, the more that shall be expected from us.

We who have been so blessed in Canada, owe at least a moment of silence to those whose service is to be remembered on this most special of days. We also owe the continuing commitment to keep faith in our nation's resolve to live for more than the lesser of evils, but to struggle to lead a good life, in order to prove worthy of fellow Canadians whose souls are honored through Lieutenant-Colonel McCrae's immortal poem, In Flanders Fields:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— John McCrae

I can't hope to match the lasting power of Lt-Col McCrae's words. Still I have tried, in my video honoring the veterans of World War II, to touch my fellow citizens' souls in the same way as his poem has forever touched me.

We Remember You, and give thanks.

Remembering our Good Neighbors

Our scenic Stanley Park offers many stimulating sights for the curious visitor, if they have the patience to find them. As we approach Remembrance Day, I thought it fitting to spotlight a Vancouver memorial connected with the visit by US President Warren G. Harding, back in 1923. This marked the first time an American President officially visited his northern neighbor, and the remarks he delivered during that visit have much to say about neighbors, Covenants, and faith. But first, some personal observations.

It is no longer fashionable, it seems, to admire the United States of America, and Americans in general. I lost a couple of new friendships this past summer due to the depth of their anti-American sentiment... or perhaps I should say, due to the degree of my admiration for America. In the heat of our unexpected political argument, I let loose with a heartfelt declaration of my deep gratitude for our southern neighbor, listing off a quick rendition of the accomplishments that mark that country, in my judgment, as the greatest nation in recorded history. My short monologue ended with this summary: “Americans are the most decent and generous people in the world today. I would be proud to be American. God Bless America.”

The two recent university graduates were speechless. After a pregnant pause, one admitted that in all his life he had never heard anyone say the things I had just said. He had never met anyone who admitted they actually liked, let alone loved, America. We agreed to disagree about our views, but it seems that this disagreement entails shunning me for mine. Oh well.

In a world filled with genuine tyrants, not the make-believe bushitler McChimpy boogeymen the left prop up in order to avoid facing the true evil staining the globe today... with recent history filled with awful regimes killing more of their own citizens through repression than can happen in open warfare with neighboring nations, we Canadians are blessed indeed to be neighbors to the United States of America.

The fantasists on the left have as deep a faith in the general goodness of Americans as I do, for the very fact that if you drive around with a "9-11 was a conspiracy" sticker on your car, and don't expect to be hauled off to prison for it, that is a sign that you don't truly believe what your slogan proclaims. Murderous tyrants simply do not allow such freedoms to their subjects... or, as a rule, put up with it from those who live next door.

On Remembrance Day, as we remember our own who have sacrificed so much towards maintaining our continuing freedoms, we should spare a moment to remember the generosity of our American neighbors, and all that they have done, are doing, and likely will continue to do, on our behalf. May God Bless America, no matter what university graduates are told to think.

From the Harding memorial, his speech delivered on that long-ago day, July 26, 1923:

“What an object lesson of peace is shown today by our two countries to all the world. No grim-faced fortifications mar our frontiers, no huge battleships patrol our dividing waters, no stealthy spies lurk in our tranquil border hamlets. Only a scrap of paper recording hardly more than a simple understanding, safe-guards lives and properties on the Great Lakes, and only humble mile posts mark the inviolable boundary line for thousands of miles through farm and forest.

Our protection is in our fraternity, our armour is our faith; the tie that binds more firmly year by year is ever increasing acquaintance and comradeship through interchange of citizens and the compact is not of perishable parchment, but of fair and honorable dealing, which, God grant, shall continue for all time.”