In remembrance of my father who served with the Essex Scottish, participated in the raid on Dieppe, was captured and as he so often said, spent "3 years as a guest of the Germans".
Thank you to all veterans and serving members of the Canadian Forces.
Lest We Forget.
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I’m always amazed these sportscasters and announcers can call the game with McDavid’s **** in their mouths all the time.
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My thoughts are with my namesake who gave his life at Vimy Ridge.
As someone with a young family I'm also thinking about the men and women who passed on that part of life in order to represent and fight for Canadian values. I'm very proud of what they did.
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"OOOOOOHHHHHHH those Russians" - Boney M
But not until you come here and see the graves does it really hit home. We talk about the ultimate sacrifice too often as a turn of phrase, something that comes off our lips in a classroom or perhaps beside a cenotaph. But, for example, come to Tyne Cot Cemetery near Passchendaele, where the white markers stretch out for what seems like forever, section after section, row after row, plot by plot, and you understand what it really means.
There are 12,000 graves here, Canadians, British, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, Indians and more. There are Victoria Cross winners buried here. There are two Canadian brothers, resting side by side. There are teenagers who lied about their ages to make this trip. Every grave tells a story.
Perhaps the saddest part is that we don’t know most of them. Roughly 70 per cent of all the tombstones carry no name. The bodies weren’t identifiable. “A soldier of the Great War,” they read. “Known unto God.”
At least those poor souls have a resting place. On a wall that gracefully rings the east side of Tyne Cot, another 30,000 names are etched into the granite, line by line, letter by letter. They were put there because their names wouldn’t fit on the Menin Gate Memorial, a few kilometres away in the town of Ypres, where 55,000 names fill every centimeter of space. These are the ones whose bodies were never found, who simply disappeared, perhaps blown apart or buried in the mud most of these battlefields turned into.
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Remembering my Grandad today. Shot down in a Lancaster over Magdeburg in his first flight. Spent his POW time in Stalag Luft III as a "penguin" spreading the excavated dirt from the great escape tunnels around the yard.
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Lots to remember today. I've been lucky enough to visit trenches on the western and eastern fronts, Vimy Ridge, Verdun, Pearl Harbour, Galipoli, Churchill War Rooms, the Killing Fields and Landmine museum in Cambodia, the Hanoi Hilton, Musée de l'Armée in Paris and our War Museum in Ottawa.
Both sides Grandparent's served in WW2, and a great uncle never came back from Italy.
Huge thanks for the massive turnout at the Military Museum.
I was pretty impressed with the turnout at Central Memorial Park. Given what's been going on south of us I was proud to see people from all walks of life at the service. Kids, adults, veterans. Those of us born in the country, and those who are newer Canadians. I was proud to see how inclusive our society is.
I'm equally proud of the new tradition where, once the official ceremony is over, the general public lays their poppy on the cenotaph or memorial. I like this personal connection.
Is it generally accepted now that Remembrance Day includes all Canadian wars and battles and not just WWI?
Yes, originally Remembrance Day was solely a remembrance of the Great War but as time and unfortunately history has demonstrated, Remembrance Day now also honours the sacrifice of all Canadians who have served in all the subsequent wars and campaigns.
Next time you watch the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa you'll notice that the National War Memorial references a number of subsequent wars/campaigns to the Great War.
Remembrance Day 2016
