Tag Archives: Remembrance Day

Remembering in 2023

I don’t remember when Remembrance Day (Veterans day in the US) first seeped into my consciousness. Probably around the time I started school, which makes it more than 60 years ago. My grandfather, I knew, had been a soldier, as had some of the other men from the church my family attended. They were veterans […]

Remembering in 2022

I took time today to remember those Canadians who fought and died for democracy. Two minutes of silence at 11 a.m.isn’t much, but it is gesture with huge symbolic meaning. That sadly seems less fashionable as the years go by. Earlier this week I was walking on the campus of the Royal Military College in […]

Remembrance Day Memories

Today is Remembrance Day, a time to reflect on wars past and those who fought them. As I write this, I haven’t decided if I will be attending the ceremonies in person or watching on television. Originally I thought I would write some new reflections for this day – I have many unused phtoos of […]

Upon Reflection…

  Sometimes, rather than jumping into the fray, I like to let things percolate. Which makes me late with my thoughts on the firing of TV commentator Don Cherry, two weeks ago today.. To Canadians Cherry is an icon, or a buffoon, someone who has always stirred passions. A former National Hockey League player and […]

Remembrance Day 2019

  Canada remembers its war dead today, as it does every November 11th. It was on this date in 1918 that the “Great War,” the “War To End All Wars” came to an end. Today we know that the First World War was just the beginning. Most years of the 20th century saw war being […]

The Other Side

  Remembrance Day is tomorrow – in Canada anyway. When we moved to Germany I was surprised to discover that Germans don’t remember their war dead on November 11. Germans will take time to remember next Sunday. Growing up as a Canadian I never thought much about the casualties on the other side. Which made […]

An Act of Remembrance

As much of the world celebrates Remembrance Day on Monday, I am re-posting some of my earlier thoughts on the subject. Today’s post comes from 2016. I only know her name, nothing else about her. And where she lived in 1916, a place that I had never heard of before, Manor, Saskatchewan. By 1921 she […]

Remembrance Day 2018

One hundred years ago today the guns fell silent. Back then they called it “The War To End All Wars.” It wasn’t. Now it is a name and number: World War One. Millions more would die in armed conflict over the next hundred years and continue to die today in smaller conflicts around the globe. […]

Truly Random Thoughts For Your Sunday

Watching the Remembrance Day ceremonies at the National War Memorial on television Friday I was struck once more with the passage of time. When I was younger, the elderly veterans at the cenotaph were my grandfather’s generation, men who had fought in the First World War. Those men are long dead. It has been 71 […]

Remembering

I only know her name, nothing else about her. And where she lived in 1916,a place that I had never heard of before, Manor, Saskatchewan. By 1921 she lived in Verwood, a place that no longer exists. Today we remember those who died in the war, fighting for our freedom. I will be thinking of […]