November 11, 2014

November 11, 2014 has been brilliantly sunny.  The temperature is -1 at 3:00pm and should fall to -3 tonight.  I walked to the Remembrance Day service at the Kal Tire Centre this morning.  By 10:30 the place was almost full.  As usual, the service was well organized and very moving at moments.  One of the speeches was rather tedious and sabre-rattling, but the community orchestra and singers, highland bands and brightly uniformed members of every military and public safety group in town created an overall atmosphere of mixed solemnity and celebration of lives lost.  Two of the participants, probably the youngest and the oldest, provided the highlights of the ceremony.  The young girl who had won the elementary school war poetry competition read her poem.  It consisted of several poppy metaphors.  In one of them she said that the poppy is a suitcase that opens easily, with a glance, and out tumble memories in a jumble of joy and sorrow.  The whole poem was quite unique, with more assonance than alliteration and none of the usual painfully strained rhyming couplets. The man was a 94-year old veteran of WW2 who was laying a wreath in memory of his comrades.  After most of the wreaths had been laid, he was introduced.  He walked up the long isle carrying his, a young soldier at his side.  As they approached the memorial, the whole audience stood up and clapped for quite a long time.  I was moved to tears. War is hell.  It should not be glamorized and young lives should never be sacrificed at its alter.  But it seems right to remember comrades and fellow human beings who died in the horror of combat before they could experience the joys and sorrows that make life on earth so dear.  Dad also is 94 and although he can no longer walk as independently erect as that man did, he holds his head up with the same sense that some things are right, others not, and that attention must be paid to the former.  

The Honour Guard at the Remembrance Day Service with the Vernon Community Band in the background