Remembrance Day

I sit with my Father’s picture plainly in view on this day. My Grandfather is in his eyes and heart as well. They both were pilots in the First and Second World Wars respectively. Today is a day to reflect on them and their comrades in arms.

Both of these men enlisted as boys, no older than the ones currently arguing about removing John A. MacDonald’s name from a University building or changing the name of Dundas Street for $7,000,000. Or those so intent on mastering the new art of being as inoffensive as possible by surrendering any individuality. Or those campaigning for, or weakly welcoming the ever growing role of the Nanny State in Canada especially.

This is a day not just to reflect on lost lives caused by war in the literal sense. It is also a day to consider how many lives were completely upended, rerouted, suspended, shortened through disease and injury, and forever altered from what might have been, in the absence of these horrendous wars.

Both my Father and Grandfather, along with millions of others throughout the world, sacrificed so much of themselves for little -if any- recompense. They saw the matter at hand as fairly simple - to sacrifice their own safety in defence of the freedom of future generations. The threat was obvious and they valued freedom above their own physical well being. I have a feeling that few of them doubted their decision even as they encountered the horrors that no 18-22 year old person should ever see.

However, I am also certain that they would never have foreseen the present absolute surrender of those freedoms without even a discussion, let alone a fight. Canadians left their courage and love of liberty on those battlefields and in the hearts of those more noble generations.

The ones who were lucky to make it through the war often never recovered upon returning to civilian life. Cut off from their own emotions, having lost a critical period of their life, many of them were compelled to forgo further education, to take jobs they didn’t like, to marry, have children, and ‘settle’ into a lifestyle that had been chosen for them more than as a result of their own volition. They went from child to adult with nothing in between except the horror of war..

Having been celebrated as war heroes like my own Father was, how many young men spent the rest of their lives feeling a type of PTSD that was not even recognized at that time. In our own era of the cult of the victim, it is hard to imagine that these men (and some women of course) were not allowed to feel victimized at all.

I find it incredible that around the city on this day I see people virtue signalling (as with so much woke culture) with their poppies, their Starbucks Lattes and moment of silence. What are they remembering? I wonder if they are actually remembering anything beyond their own feeling of ritual and obligation that is so common today - the empty gestures and imaginary demons resulting in land acknowledgment prayers, anti-bias training, DEI rehabilitation and flags at half mast are more important than any action. In the less than Brave New World, words matter more than actions.

That an entire generation gave up their own safety and years of life to protect freedoms for us that would be blithely thrown away, given up without even a shrug, is something that is not allowed to be part of the picture in these Remembrance Day ceremonies. We would be well served to be reminded of this stark reality staring at us after the last 20 months.

That their descendants would welcome the pervasive Government control and mandates of all kinds without a blink, and certainly without accountability, is a societal collapse that reminds me of the end of the T.S. Elliot poem, The Hollow Men;

‘This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper’ .

Furthermore, that these future generations would even act as snitches and enforcers for this tyranny without a legal basis would have not even occurred to those generations of people who valued people above ideology. I remember my Father pointing out the ominous beginnings of the disrespect for freedom and he would not have imagined where it would lead.

On this Remembrance Day, let’s try to actually remember what the stakes were, what the price was in a larger sense, and why the sacrifices were made by so many. Perhaps we can reawaken ourselves to the ultimate risk in ridding ourselves of all risk in the name of the infernal Canadian obsession with ‘safety’.

Perhaps we can truly remember these heroes who had but one goal - to protect our freedoms. Let’s honour them by protecting those freedoms ourselves before they are no longer there to protect. Let’s choose a bang over a whimper.