Lest We Forget

It was my great honour to be asked to speak at the Remembrance Day ceremony in Dwight today, and to lay a wreath on behalf of the Township of Lake of Bays. Almost a hundred people were out in the chilly November sunshine. Alice Allinson, who was the driving force behind building the cenotaph here in Dwight, was there on the arms of her family. The colour guard -- busy this week, with multiple services around the area -- marched on the colours. The service in Dwight is held early, because it is not possible to be at all the centres on November 11th. That's not at all a bad thing -- it opens the window for people to remember. The ceremony is time-honoured, and thanks must go to Bernice and John for keeping it moving it forward right on schedule, to Ed for ensuring the music was all on cue, to Tony for keeping the flagbearers in perfect step. Here is what I said...

It’s an honour to welcome you here today on behalf of the Lake of Bays, to this wonderful memorial built by our community members. A place that allows us to hold these memories close.

The history channel recently aired a documentary on the Somme. Long ago. Far away. Pouring over old film footage, soldiers coming up out of the trenches, we were told this was perhaps the first recorded images of soldiers falling in battle. Ever since then, that is mostly how we have seen our wars – through a lens. Distant. Without the sound, the smell, the shaking in the bones.

For most of us, war is far away. People get older, memories get fragile, war becomes something that happened far away in time, far away in place. Blessedly, for most of us, war is something that belongs to someone else. We have stories told to us by parents or grandparents – I remember my own mother’s version of standing under a bomber’s moon near London watching the 1000 bomber raid take flight, filling the sky in all directions, shaking the ground, for two solid hours as the planes headed for the continent. I heard that story, looked at photos, watched movies, but it wasn’t MY story, it happened Far Away.

For the people to whom those wars were far too close, well, every year there are less of them as time marches on relentlessly. It’s easy to forget. It’s easy to take what we have today for granted.

Most of us – again, blessedly – have never been the ones on the sharp end.

Give thanks for that.

Gratitude can fade along with memory. But the price of the freedoms we enjoy is vigilance.

Remembrance Day ceremonies, are so important. Not just to honour memories of the sacrifices made, and thank Veterans who remain, but to remind us that war is not so distant as we might think. We are still at war today, all around this globe, with courageous men and women in uniform, and their families waiting at home.

We complain about the amount spent on security, yet we send our people into harm’s way, to places we would never go, to do a job we cannot do.

While the people who once fought in the trenches at the Somme, or stormed the beaches on D-Day... while they grow fewer in our midst and their memories fade like the sound of those bombers droning out across the Channel while my mother watched, we have now a highway named for Heroes. We have wars happening in our living rooms, brought to us from places Far Away, and somehow unreal on the television screen.

This moment, Remembrance Day, is the time when we stand still and let the world spin without us, for a few precious moments, to honour those who paid for our freedom, paid for our peace, with their lives. To thank those still out there, wearing our flag, fighting our battles, paying the price that we may continue in peace and security, keeping the wars far away from Canadian soil. This is when we remember that Peace comes with a price, and can never be taken for granted. This is when we remember that for many of us, for our friends and neighbours, with parents, siblings and children in uniform on our behalf, the wars we fight now are as close as it is possible to get.

This is the moment when we hold them all Close – in our memories, in our minds, in our hearts -- and must never forget. It should not just be for one day, for two minutes, that we give thanks for this country and the freedoms we enjoy.

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them”.

That final famous quote is from Laurence Binyon's f war poem, To the Fallen. That fourth stanza, the one than ends with these two powerful lines, is the best known. But there is more to the poem, and I'm going to end this post quoting the final stanza:

"As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain."

Lest we forget...

Laurence Binyon, For the Fallen