Can we do more to speak of peace when we remember war?

Every year, Canadians gather on Nov. 11 to remember and honour those who have fallen on behalf of Canada.

In the week leading up to Remembrance Day, we share stories of the sacrifices of military men and women, and those of their families. We vow to never forget the tragedy of war and ensure a future of peace. But do we do enough to talk about peace, and how to achieve it, during this time? I don’t think we do. Too often, our collective national conversation is focused on the tragedies of the past and less so on solutions for the future.

Remembrance as it is currently practised is focused on a narrow story of the past — on the tragic loss of military lives on our side. Recognizing and mourning this loss is important. But in and of itself, it may not be enough to pave the path towards peace. To do that we need to include other stories in our act of remembrance.

Let us remember those veterans who took up the cause of peace because of what they experienced in war. People like Giff Gifford, the Canadian Second World War veteran who helped found Veterans Against Nuclear Arms in the 1980s, a national organization which remained active until 2014.

Gifford and hundreds of other Canadian veterans spoke out about the insanity of the nuclear arms race and the potential for nuclear annihilation.

In an interview, Gifford said of his peace activism, “I’ve re-enlisted. We went to war because we felt our children’s future was in danger. Now it’s very much in danger and we’ve signed up again.”

An expanded form of remembrance may also include remembering all victims of war — military and civilian — on both sides. It could include remembering the stories of refugees and immigrants who have come to Canada fleeing war. It needs to include the perspective of First Nations who were subjugated by colonial military force. And it should include the stories of those who work actively to find alternatives to war or have expertise in disarmament and conflict resolution.

Can such an expanded set of memories become part of our collective Canadian memory and practice of remembrance? Recognizing this diversity of relevant experience would allow us to draw on a broader range of knowledge in advancing peace.

The meaning of the red poppy is contested. There are those who see it as representing the sacred memory of the war dead who made the ultimate sacrifice, those who see it as reminding us that war should never happen again, and those who say it glorifies war. Some prefer to don a white poppy — a symbol created by the Women’s Co-operative Guild in the 1930s to pledge a commitment to working towards peace and remembering all victims of war.

Beyond our choice of what poppy to wear or whether to wear one at all, what matters most are our actions. The struggle for peace is as urgent today as it has ever been, and this includes the struggle for nuclear disarmament that Gifford and hundreds of other Canadian veterans fought for in the late Cold War and beyond.

Canada sadly remains one of the countries in the world that has yet to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, even though polls have found that 74 per cent of Canadians support signing it.

I wish we did more to honour the memory of veterans like Gifford, who said in his 1992 book “This Was My War”: “Weapons are no longer simple tools of the military, they have become world destroyers and war itself must be abolished if civilization is to survive.”