Lest We Forget

Every year I seem to write the same post in and around Remembrance Day. Last year I lamented at the number of people, or lack of, who I witnessed wearing poppies in and around the city. This year, I lamented not only a lack of poppies being worn, but a lack of veterans. In fact, I have not yet seen one veteran or even one box of poppies at a single store, street corner, or subway station as I usually do each year.

Then last night I saw a story on the news that literally brought tears to my eyes. A WWII Canadian Army vet who, each year, donates his days for one week leading up to Rememberance Day to stand in a Toronto mall with information on Canada's military history and the lives lost, and to raise money for Veterans programs through the sale of poppies. Throughout the years he has noticed a severe decline in the number of people stopping by to share a kind word and donate some change for a poppy. The camera ran idly as dozens of people walked by blank faced with not even a glance of recognition towards the elderly man in his suit and tie, army medals emblazed on his chest, standing in front of the Canadian flag.

I started to think once again about the freedoms that exist in this country, about the danger this man and thousands upon thousands of others voluntarily put themselves through to ensure a bright future for faceless people, many whome they would not live to see or know. I wonder at a society that does not largely recognize such feats; is it a lack of education, or lack of empathy on society's behalf? Do we live such privledged lives that we take for granted all that's given to us, as if it's owed? A common saying states that we can't have the good without the bad - we haven't had the bad in so many years that perhaps we have no idea what good feels and is anymore.

My boyfriend of many years has been involved with the army ever since I have known him. Initally I disagreed with the idea of his participation in the military, seeing it as a defunct arm of the Government which drains tax payer dollars. I am opposed to the our mission in Afganistan, believing that a Government and sect of people who do not want to be helped cannot be won over, at the cost of innocent lives on both sides. However, the more I consider the bravery of those willing to put their own lives and futures on the line for a cause in which they believe, the more the politics and the idea of right or wrong melts away. What's left there is a respect and a pride that there are people left in the world, particularily in Canada, that care enough about the well-being of others to put their own lives at risk. If I could only be so selfless.

This Rememberance Day, I will put aside the politics and my own concepts of right and wrong, and simply celebrate those who faught for a cause they believed in, and for which they put their own lives on the line for the good of their fellow man. And if that isn't worth spending a day remembering and being thankful for, I don't know what is. Now tackling the problem of showing the next generation the importance of this, something I don't know how to do. And that gives me a great sadness impossible to expel.