14 Replies to “Eleventh Hour”

  1. I put together a similar tribute very quickly yesterday for the company where I work ( https://vimeo.com/191116931 ). I did my best, but damn, there’s no competing with Mr. Cohen’s mesmerizing voice. I wish I had a voice like that.

  3. So: check out our PM, during “God Save the Queen” on Remembrance Day, refusing to sing. I have the screen caps if needed.

  4. I just got home from 2 Intelligence Company’s service at Intrepid Park, the former site of “Camp X” in Whitby Ontario. Given that there are several much bigger parades in the area it was well attended.

  5. He may not know the words so he had a smirk/smile. Remember his father had no respect for the Queen, as Prime Minister representing us as Canadians, he famously did a pirouette behind her back at Buckingham Palace.

  6. My heartfelt thanks to all Canadian veterans, passed and present, for your dedication and sacrifice in helping keep this country free. We will NEVER forget you.
    Hopefully, our current leftist-directed socialist path doesn’t ultimately make all that sacrifice for naught.

  7. My father is soon-to-be 94 years and served in WWII with two of his brothers who recently passed.
    Dad always attends services decked out in his beret, blazer and medals. Even tough he still drives (yes) he was driven to Spruce Grove today and will be one of the fewer and fewer old vets from WWII. He rightfully gets pretty emotional.
    In 2005, he and his two vet brothers attended the services in Mayerthorpe and it was the first time ever they had all been together at a Remembrance Day service because dad lived outside of Alberta for decades. My wife, my brother and I were there and it was very special.
    We had a nice chat on the phone last night.
    It is 11 AM as I write…remembering our lives and those of the fallen.

  8. The emcee at our local ceremony introduced an interesting fact about recent conflicts. He pointed out that more Canadian troops served in Afghanistan than the Korean War. An older gentleman standing next to me wondered what would happen to these ceremonies when all the Second World War Vets were gone. I imagine 20 years from now some of the focus will shift to these more recent conflicts to keep things relevant to people.

  9. Abraham Lincoln’s words perfectly reflect our thanks for those whose sacrifice simply cannot be encapsulated in mere words and ceremonies:
    “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

  10. Today I remember Lt.Denis Huscroft killed April 21st,1945 in Holland. 21 years old, commissioned in the field. Tried to join up as a 16 year old and was sent home. Returned a year later and made it in with the Rocky Mtn Rangers. Landed on Juno with the Scottish Regiment 3rd Company.
    My mother said there was always something special about Denis and that the family was never the same after his death.

  12. To the tune of Vivaldi’s rain, also known as the largo from winter in The Four Seasons.
    Requiem for the fallen
    The horns and the pipes are calling
    In Trenches, muddy,
    On the ships, on the seas
    The airmen on the breeze
    ‘Ere by guns or disease
    Many fell.
    Beloved Sons
    And fathers… gone
    Most every one
    Is sorely miss-ed
    God keep you until we meeeeeet again.
    Requiem for the fallen
    You’re gone but not forgotten
    We gather in the winds of autumn
    We’ll walk well-worn paths
    to the old cenotaphs
    Where your brothers come back
    To salute…
    As the poppies on our hearts say, we remember,
    So we gather at these places each November
    In peace, rest, remembered ones

  13. I heard the tail end of a CBC radio program for Remembrance Day, they played that recording of Leonard Cohen reciting Lt-Col. McRae’s poem.
    Just the first verse, of course, in “our Canada” we can’t have that war-mongering stuff about passing a torch and the dead not resting if the cause for which they fought is abandoned. Not “Canadian values.”

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