We Stand on Guard
A defiant Canada remains strong and free
A defiant Canada remains strong and free
SCARLET POPPIES strewn in silence on a granite tomb; tears in almost every eye. This past November 11 was a Remembrance Day like no other, especially at Canada’s National War Memorial in Ottawa. A bright November day, dry and warmer than expected, and rededication of the monument and the presence of Anne, Princess Royal, couldn’t account for the largest crowd at the ceremony since its unveiling in 1939. This year, many felt they had to be there.
The murders of two uniformed soldiers by self-rad- icalized but unconnected native-born jihadists in the three weeks leading to Remembrance Day had rocked the country. The first shock: Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, 53, died after he and a second warrant officer in civilian clothes, were deliberately run over in a parking lot in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que. Then, only two days later, Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, 24, was shot and mortally wounded as he and Cpl. Branden Stevenson, 25, stood watch at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Both were reservists from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada (Princess Louise’s) regiment
based in Hamilton. The war memorial originally symbolized Canada’s steadfast reaction in defence of peace and freedom during the Great War. At its dedication in 1939, the Princess’s grandfather, King George VI, described it as “the spontaneous response of the nation’s conscience,” saying it revealed the nation’s soul. Then in 2000, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was added to the site. That November, people left poppies on the tomb at the conclusion of the Remembrance service.
As word spread of the shooting at the memorial and gunfire in the halls of Parliament, Canadians turned to traditional media, which generally retained a journalistic calm, and to each other via social media. We collectively held our breaths until the the shooter was despatched by Kevin Vickers, 58, Parliamentary sergeant-atarms, and a volley of gunshots from police and security guards and until it was determined that he had no accomplices. Fear and anxiety gave way to anger – How dare they! – and to solidarity in deep sorrow.
Orders that uniforms were not to be worn off-duty galled proud military personnel; many civilians preferred them in uniform, too. In protest, numerous veterans stood guard at local cenotaphs in berets and medals.
Uncowed, Canadians seemed resolved to hold true to values of diversity and fairness, posting Love Thy Neighbour signs and scrubbing graffiti off a mosque in Cold Lake, Alta. In Cirillo’s hometown of Hamilton, students staged encounters where one, a Muslim dressed in a traditional thobe, was taunted as a terrorist. Hamiltonians uniformly defended him – the test ended when the pretend aggressor received a punch in the nose.
After the trauma and the sadness, Canadians needed to mourn together, to pay tribute to the soldiers. Warrant Officer Vincent’s family wished to grieve out of the public eye. A quiet well-liked man, he had served much of his 28-year military career as a firefighter. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, NDP leader Tom Mulcair, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, who had exchanged hugs when Parliament resumed the day after the Ottawa shootings, joined provincial and federal politicians and Vincent’s many military friends and colleagues in paying their respects at his funeral in Longueuil, Que.
Cpl. Cirillo had been a social media enthusiast and we soon fell in love with his handsome smile and charismatic persona. His death hit his Argyll comrades deeply. They hadn’t lost anyone during deployments to Afghanistan and he was popular in the regiment.
Cirillo didn’t go home alone. Overpasses along the Highway of Heroes portion of Highway 401 were massed with people of all ages paying quiet tribute as the motorcade travelled from Ottawa to Hamilton; firefighters hoisted our maple leaf flag on aerial ladders.
In Hamilton, thousands sombrely lined the route of his funeral cortege. Many wore the red and white of Canada’s flag; bemedalled veterans saluted in farewell. As the Argylls precisely paced the slow funeral march, his distraught mother leaned on Cpl. Stevenson. Most heartbreaking was the occasional attempt at the slow pace by a small boy wearing a Glengarry cap with its distinctive Argyll red and white dicing. A single father, Cirillo adored the little boy.
Harper, Mulcair, Trudeau, invited guests and dignitaries joined the family, filling Christ’s Church Cathedral; hundreds more, many in military uniforms, watched from the nearby First Ontario Centre. “Now he is Canada’s son,” Rev. Canon Robert Fead, standing near the flag-draped casket, pointed out. Harper noted that ironically, Cirillo had lost his life guarding Canada’s place of sacred remembrance. “These monuments remind us that freedom is never free,” he said.
Across Canada, Royal Canadian Legion poppies were distributed in record numbers, and larger-than-usual crowds attended Remembrance Day ceremonies in many towns and cities. Staying home meant the attackers had won, one woman noted. It was a show of defiance – a resolve to stand together, no matter what comes.
Figures depicting peace and freedom stand atop the granite arch of the National War Memorial, ideals Canadians unhesitatingly stepped up to defend 100 years ago. On Remembrance Day, Gov. Gen. David Johnston noted, “Freedom without peace is agony, and peace without freedom is slavery, and we will tolerate neither. This is the truth we owe our dead.”
Keeping freedom robust and undiminished by laws made in fear is also what we owe ourselves.