We will pay our respects to those veterans who have marched into history and we will thank those who are still with us.
— TIM COOK ON THE MEANING OF REMEMBRANCE DAY.
Remembrance Day is a time to look back, in order to ground ourselves in the present. It is a day of grief and loss, pride and reflection. While it is a day that emerged from the bloody and transformative First World War, it is not static or fixed in time. It is a symbol whose meaning has changed from generation to generation, mirroring subsequent wars, conflicts and evolving societal concerns — sometimes infused with great import, other times ignored and almost shunned.
Standing with Britain, Canada and Newfoundland’s service and sacrifice during the First World War created new national symbols and heroes at battlefields like Ypres, Beaumont Hamel, Vimy and Amiens. The gut- wrenching effort propelled Canada ( and to a lesser extent the separate dominion of Newfoundland) forward to be recognized by the world for their contributions to the Allied victory. But the cost was unbearably high, with over 68,000 dead in the two dominions.
That first Armistice Day, on Nov. 11, 1919, was meant to mark the fallen soldiers with two minutes of silence. No Canadian or Newfoundlander needed to be told what to remember. They had lived through the fear and uncertainty, pain and loss.
In the war’s aftermath, Canadians and Newfoundlanders built memorials across the country in thousands of cities, towns and villages. Funds were raised by community leaders, grieving parents and returned veterans for the stone cenotaphs that stood in place of the dead who lay overseas in the vast cemeteries, or whose names were captured on memorials even as their bodies were lost to their loved ones.
The day of commemoration had other overt symbols, with North Americans and western Europeans wearing the red poppy from 1921 onward, inspired by John Mccrae’s poem, “In Flanders’ Fields.” Mccrae’s poem reflected the shifting nature of remembrance: in 1915, it was a martial call by the dead to fight the Germans (“Keep up the quarrel with the foe”); by the 1920s, it had been adopted as a symbol of the need to never forget (“To you from failing hands we throw.”)
When Armistice Day was renamed Remembrance Day in 1931, its meaning changed again. This occurred in the depths of the Great Depression, an economic crisis that led to deep despair for many veterans, especially those with invisible injuries that we would now label as post- traumatic stress disorder, but which were little understood at the time.
After the erection of the National War Memorial in Ottawa in 1939, it became the site for the national ceremony, and following 1945, a sacred place to mark the sacrifice of the 45,000 Canadians who died in service during the Second World War and the more than 500 who were lost during the Korean War.
Wi th Newfoundland joining Canada in 1949, its people kept many of their unique historic events, not the least being to mark the sacrifice of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment on July 1, 1916, on the Somme. It was with no small irony that the new country they joined celebrated that day as its birthday.
From 1939 to 1945, a new Canada had been forged during the total war against Hitler, the Nazis and other fascists, and at its end, more than one million veterans returned home, started businesses and began families that contributed to what would be known as the baby boom. Canadians left the war behind and moved forward into the wealthier second half of the 20th century.
But by the ’ 60s, a new generation of Canadians untouched directly by the world wars found little meaning in Remembrance Day. Furthermore, the war in Vietnam, the rise of youth culture and the threat of nuclear annihilation turned many against war, even the commemoration of those who fell in it.
Remembrance Day faded in relevance. The Royal Canadian Legion and other veterans’ groups struggled to convince Canadians of keeping faith with the fallen. In 1968, the Globe and Mail noted that Remembrance Day was no longer a day that mattered to most Canadians and was now only an event of “public indifference.”
The size of the Remembrance Day ceremonies in the ’60s and ’ 70s dwindled to a fraction of what they were after the world wars. Some feared the day would disappear entirely.
Lest we forget, Canadians had said in the ’ 20s; 50 years later, they did not know what to remember.
After a long period of apathy and indifference, there was an abrupt change in the mid-’ 90s, after decades of embracing the comfortable image of the peacekeeper and failing to teach our history to generations of children. Canada’s epic contributions to victory had all but been forgotten, when thousands of Canada’s Second World War veterans returned to France to mark the 50th anniversary of D- Day in 1994, and even more were welcomed by the grateful Dutch people in 1995. Roaring crowds thanked their liberators, and Canadians watched with surprise from their living rooms as aged warriors were hailed as heroes.
Europeans had not forgotten their Canadian liberators.
From that point forward, Canadians began to pay more attention to the country’s military history. Remembrance Day gradually returned as a symbol of prominence among Canadians, and events like the interring of Canada’s unknown soldier in 2000 at the National War Memorial stirred even more interest.
Canada’s long commitment to the war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014 was another reminder that Canada was not just a nation of peacekeepers, but also of combatants.
This Remembrance Day will be another in the long continuum, and it comes at a time when Canadians again seem more attuned to the service and sacrifice of service personnel and veterans, although — sadly — when we are unable to physically gather at community cenotaphs due to our shared struggle against the pandemic.
But we will still bear witness, in our homes and dwellings, some clutching pictures, medals or mementos of parents, grandparents and other loved ones. We will pay our respects to those veterans who have marched into history and we will thank those who are still with us, whether they served during the Cold War, Afghanistan or more recent conflicts.
We will think of Canadian Forces members who are deployed today in dangerous parts of the world to restore peace and offer hope. Most of us will wear the red poppy and pray for no more wars, as did those in 1919, and those who have commemorated the day every year since.
We will stand, head bowed, with the Silver Cross mother who continues to represent the fallen, and the families that must live with absence. The cost of war, we will remember, has never been evenly spread across the country’s citizens.
And we will pause for those two minutes of silence that strike to our core. In those moments, our thoughts will turn to our shared history and the times that Canadians have come together over multiple generations in moments of crisis, where they saw no way forward but to march, together and with uncertainty, but with a resolve that continues to pierce through the ages.
SOME FEARED THE DAY WOULD DISAPPEAR ENTIRELY.
— TIM COOK
Canadians watched with surprise ... as aged warriors were hailed as heroes.