New bishop to be installed next week at St. Peterin-Chains
Juno Beach Centre pays homage to 45,000 Canadian soldiers killed in Second World War
“You can picture them landing. It must have been terrifying. There would have been bodies everywhere. They would have been my age.”
That’s what 18-year-old Thomas Beamish-Lavoie said as I sat down beside him on Juno Beach. He was taking a solo walk and soaking in the surroundings.
The organizers of this trip couldn’t have asked for better insight from the Grade 12 St. Peter Secondary student.
“It’s like that opening scene from Beamish-Lavoie added. “You don’t really get it until you’re sitting here.”
Our group of 50 students from St. Peter and Holy Cross arrived at Juno Beach on Monday morning.
The Juno Beach Centre pays homage to the 45,000 Canadians who lost their lives during the Second World War, of which 5,500 were killed during the Battle of Normandy and 359 on D-Day.
But it’s the beach itself that’s the real showstopper.
“It’s amazing to stand here. It’s like a piece of Canada,” Grade 12 student Steven Moore said.
Steve Brown, who teaches Canadian history at St. Peter, said he’s often showing his class pictures or using Google maps to bring to life the famous sites we’ve visited this week such as the National Vimy Memorial and the Juno Beach Centre.
But watching students scoop up sand from the beach itself to bring home, means these lessons will be sustained for years to come.
“When you are a teacher you spend a lot of time talking about these places and trying to create a connection for these students,” Brown said. “It’s a wonderful privilege to visit and walk in these places that you’ve spent so much time talking about in the classroom and then watch the students connect to it so personally.”
Holy Cross teacher Stephen Meinhardt experienced that connection firsthand when he and his son Alexander, a student on the trip, located the name of his wife’s great uncle in the Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium.
“They can see it. They can touch it. They know it’s real,” Meinhardt said. “When my son and I touched the name of my son’s great great uncle, it became real.”
Anyone who has spent time with teenagers (try a busload of them!) knows it can be difficult to penetrate their attention.
But I’ve overheard their conversations and watched them interact with history during the past seven days as we toured Netherlands, Belgium and France.
They are wearing their Canadian flags proud. They are asking deep questions. They are getting the scope and the magnitude of the sacrifice that our previous generations made.
As we wrap up the final days of this educational tour (off to Paris!), I share the sentiments of the educators on this trip.
It’s an amazing feeling to watch these students connect with these sights. I can picture them telling their future sons and daughters about this trip and keeping the torch of remembrance alive.
A special mass to install a new Catholic bishop in Peterborough is planned for next week.
Bishop Daniel Miehm will be installed at a St. Peter-in-Chains Cathedral on April 19 at 2 p.m.
Miehm, 56, currently an auxiliary bishop in the Diocese of Hamilton, is about to lead the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peterborough.
Miehm replaces Bishop William McGrattan, who was in charge of the Diocese of Peterborough for a bit more than two years.
In early January, McGrattan was appointed the bishop of Calgary (he was to replace a bishop who was retiring, due to ill health).
The installation mass is expected to attract bishops from across Canada (including McGrattan, who is expected from Calgary).
There will also be politicians, police, clergy from other faiths and school representatives at the mass.
Everyone is welcome, and there will be a meet and greet at the Knights of Columbus hall after the mass.
Miehm was born in Kitchener and attended both elementary and high school there.
He then took philosophy courses at St. Jerome’s University (the Catholic university, federated with the University of Waterloo).
Later he took theology courses at St. Augustine Seminary in Toronto, and was ordained a priest in 1989 (he was 29, at the time).
Then he continued his theology studies in Rome for two years in the mid-1990s.
He was a priest in a number of churches in Hamilton and Ancaster before his appointment as auxiliary bishop in 2013.
The Diocese of Peterborough has 40 parishes and missions, covering an area between Parry Sound and Northumberland County, with a Catholic population of about 60,000.