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Published - Nov 5th, 2009
By
It seems so appropriate to hold Remembrance Day services at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11. Not only is it the moment that the first great war of the modern era ended in 1918 – the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month – but it is mid-November.
In this part of the country, it is a time when the harvest is done, the breathtaking beauty of autumn has faded, and the world seems to be holding its breath, awaiting winter’s icy blasts. Even on the rare occasions when the sun shines in mid-November, it is a watery light, without much warmth. A sort of melancholy surrounds us. Hiding behind our sophistication is a frightened creature who senses the approach of the season of death.
As we watch our war veterans, Legion members and others gather at the cenotaph and listen to the eerie sound of bugle and pipes, it is easy to picture in our mind’s eye a sullen, muddy landscape pockmarked by bomb craters, the stink of decay strong in the chilly, damp wind.
We know in our minds that warfare is every bit as deadly under a desert sun, and that many of our younger veterans marching in Remembrance Day parades have an image of war that involves sand and arid hills. However, in our hearts, that bone-chilling east wind of mid-November seems right. It matches not so much the varied experiences of war, but our feelings about it.
On occasion, there have been those who criticized Remembrance Day ceremonies for glorifying war. Nothing could be further from the truth. We do not glorify war although we honour those who bravely donned their country’s uniform to fight for everything we hold so dear – personal rights, human dignity, freedom and peace. It is their sacrifice that has allowed the vast majority of the people in this country to reach old age without ever having heard a gun fired in anger.
We thank those brave men and women who paid the ultimate price in past wars, and who continue to do so in Afghanistan. We honour them and remember them. But we do not celebrate, we mourn. We will never know what great things those heroes would have accomplished, what scientific discoveries they would have made, what wonderful books they would have written. What we do know is that we must take up the torch they handed to us, to make sure their sacrifice was not in vain.
It is difficult for most of us to imagine what it must be like to live in a time and place where a man cannot speak his mind, where a woman is forbidden to leave her home, where people are imprisoned without due process, where rape and murder are political tools, where a lunatic can decide to exterminate an entire race of people.
As Edmund Burke once said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” We find it difficult to imagine those evils because there were, and are people willing to do something, to stand up for what is right. There were, and are people who risk their lives for a just cause. There were, and are people who refuse to accept peace without freedom.
Perhaps there will come a day when Nov. 11 truly is a day of celebration, marking an end to war, and the need for war. Until that day comes, Remembrance Day serves as a reminder that there are far worse things than war, things that must be defeated at any cost. And so we pay silent tribute to the fallen, and honour those who came home from war to help build this great country. Most of all, we pray for those men and women who serve their country in Afghanistan.
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