Today I will take my children to the Remembrance Day ceremonies, just like my father used to take me to the remembrance ceremonies in The Netherlands where I grew up as a child. The memories of those are vivid: a sober ceremony, some music, a speech by the mayor, veterans and survivors placing some wreaths in front of the statue on the square and a silence of two minutes followed by the national anthem. But as opposed to Canadians, our day of remembrance is May 4, the day marking the eve of liberation day; the day Canadian troops liberated the North and West of The Netherlands sixty-two years ago. But there is another more major difference between these two days of remembrance: most of the victims we commemorated weren’t military, but civilian.
That was very moving. thank you for posting that.
Ditto.
My dad was among the Canadians who liberated The Netherlands.
Nah, Billy’s daddy is right, You are a leftoid moonbat. Functionally illiterate, too, apparently. Too bad, Cretien et al didn’t do the vets right in ’99, or 2005… Again, yet another mess for the left by the “natural governing party”.
I know a number of Dutch people, and they are all acutely aware of, and grateful, to the Canadian people and their military for ‘freeing us from Hitler’.
I know one Dutch individual, who makes a point of it, every May 5th, on the anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe, thanking the Canadians.
Something else – the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Canada are becoming more important, with higher numbers attending, with more ceremonies, with more people ‘wearing the poppy’, with more respect for and pride in, our military. That’s due to Harper and the Conservatives.
“That’s due to Harper and the Conservatives.
It would be nice to give them credit for it, but it would be wrong. The current groundswell started four years ago when the Martin Liberal government was all but absent from the Remembrance scene. Some federal departments, like Revenue, had made NO plans whatsoever, to acknowledge Remembrance Day when it came around. At the same time, Canadian troops in Afghanistan were just starting to be noticed by Canadians. A good many of us in the civil service took exception to the Martin government ignoring our history as they were attempting to “re-engineer” a new one. I personally embarrassed an assistant commissioner into promising to act for the next remembrance day (he came through). The renewed vigour for Remembrance Day is a result of many Canadians drawing a line in the sand and saying, no more – the Liberals will not dismiss our history so lightly. That, coupled with the realization that freedom is paid for with our families’ blood from time to time, has prompted the renewal. It doesn’t hurt that the conservatives arrived to help set the tone.
Thanks for the input, skip. You are right; it isn’t just the Conservatives; it’s, as you correctly pointed out, many Canadians who refuse to forget.
It’s quite something to see the renewal, and the sense of pride and appreciation felt by Canadians on this day.
my mother was in the low countries a few years ago. Everywhere she went people warmed up as soon as they found she was a Canadian.
It is a somber lesson for us. The people of the low countries keep the memory alive. Trudeau and the Liberals have done everything in their power to wipe it out and define it out of existence. The NDP simply treat it all as some old stupidity of no interest or importance best served by ignorance and disdainful dismissal.
Canada is a small country but we have served our time and carried on.
The Liberal ad about the “horror” of “soldiers in our cities” was not a mistake. They truly believed that Canadians shared their contempt, disdain and disregard of the military and our proud heritage. Then as now they wish to social engineer the old Canada out of existence, import a new people and make the country their conquered province.
Canada’s military is a living link with our past and our soldiers carry on the proud tradition. As such they are a culture that most of Canada’s political parties would eagerly destroy.
In Nanaimo today, we had an excellent crowd, despite blowing gusts and rain. I was especially impressed to see a number of teens – I’d say 15 -17, respectfully clapping for our vets and singing out.
I thanked our vets for serving and these kids for honouring them.
Apparently, awareness of Canada’s role in past conflicts has risen from 31% to 37% amongst school age kids . By my math, that means nearly 20% more kids are paying attention to current events and the important role our military plays.
A few years ago I used to walk a set of trails in Southwestern Vancouver. I kept running into two older women who, it turned out, were sisters. They had lived through WWII in Holland a few miles from the German border. They lived in a house which had an apple orchard. As the war in that part of Europe began to end the Germans stripped every bit of movable food from the farms surrounding them. Their mother, sure that liberation was only a week or two away, put her girls to bed to conserve energy. They lived on, well, apples until, one day, a couple of Canadians, from Winnipeg apparently, drove up in a jeep. The sister’s mother offered them apples and they unloaded every single thing they had which the little girls could eat.
The girls lived and they remembered.