Another Nov. 11 approaches, and it’s another Remembrance Day when we aren’t encouraged to gather as a community to honour those who lived, died and served.
Instead, we can try to find other ways to remember. We can find TV broadcasts and live-streams, if we’re so inclined, and hear the Ode of Remembrance, In Flanders Fields and the Last Post. Those lines of verse and those bugle notes are moving no matter how many Remembrance Day ceremonies we attend, and they’re traditions worth holding onto.
At the same time, remembrance carries meaning beyond the ceremonies and the symbols. It’s a time of year, if we wish, to try to learn more and understand more about what it meant for the world to be at war. It’s a fine time to reflect on how men and women lived and died with a kind of courage that is hard to imagine. So many rose to adversity and met the moment then, and it would be a poor repayment on our part if we were ever to forget it.
And there’s no reason we should forget – though years have passed and the world has changed, the history hasn’t faded. In our information age there are any number of ways for us to educate ourselves, hear war stories, learn lessons.
This week we can thank those who have served our country or who are serving still. We can wear a poppy and lay a wreath. We can give to the Royal Canadian Legion or other veterans’ charities in Canada. We can take a moment of silence.
Not all of us will fight or die for our country, or our beliefs, or our freedoms, or a better future. But we can live for those things, with remembrance in our glowing hearts.
This Nov. 11, we renew our pledge to remember.
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editor@nanaimobulletin.com
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