Memorial...

"The silence in between the notes

is as important as the music itself."

 

Amadeus Wolfgang Mozart

 

It's on this day that I remember all those lives who

were lost in the 9/11 attacks.

Not just those close to home but also in the aftermath

in places far away.

 



Remembering someone I never knew...

.

Today, Easter Monday marks the 95th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. This young Private would have been my fathers great Uncle and, as the clipping says, paid the ultimate sacrifice for Canada and it's allies.

Vimy Ridge was a high ground escarpment held by the Germans in WW1 and British as well as French troops failed to take this strategic piece of land.

On April 9th - 12th, 1917 , Canada sent in all four of it's divisions

of the Canadian Expeditionary Force and has become a symbol

of Canadian acheivment and sacrifice.

In the end, 3,600 Canadians lost their lives but did gain control of the Ridge, making

this a pivotal milestone in the Great War.

A 250 acre plot of the battleground is

 memorialized in France for the price these lads paid for freedom.

Next March, my middle niece Rachel is making a trip to England

and France with the school band and part of their itinerary will

be a stop at Vimy Ridge.

She has told me that she would like to find Private Quilty's grave

and to say thank you to him.

Tonight I will toast him as well.

From the Renfrew Mercury for 11 May 1917



Remembrance...

I wrote this last year  and thought I would re post it since I still find the words to hold true.
Remember, on this day, those who made the sacrifices for our freedom.

I have never known war in my life.
I have only been witness to it through the news and stories told in books and movies.
Some of my relatives fought in wars, but I never knew them and only saw pictures of them as young soldiers in uniforms.
I am in great turmoil to hear that the most popular game gift this season is a bloody, violent interactive video complete with assaults on innocent civilians.
I am disturbed to know that people play the game of paintball as a recreational activity.

When I think of November 11th I am filled with thoughts like these:

I am not the young lad who watched his comrade fall and join the ranks of lifeless bodies on the muddy field.

I am not the naked, young girl running down the road, burned by a bomb.

I am not the face in the black and white photo in the museum for the Killing Fields.

Nor am I the veiled housewife who is killed by a roadside bomb after buying oranges in the market mid day.

I was not shot trying to jump over a wall that divided a nation.

My race did not land me in a box car headed to Auschwitz.

Alcohol and heroin, I don't need, to exercise my demons in the middle of the night.

I do not walk with a cane or artificial limbs and neither is a wheelchair my only transport.

My religion did not create a Peace Line in my neighborhood.

I was not the one who marched in the rain and slept in the filth for weeks on end.

Or looked into the eyes of my neighbor as I fired the rifle on the battlefields of North Carolina.

I was never treated like an animal because of the tone of my skin.
I am not the old man, standing with the last of his comrades, remembering friends lost.

I am a Canadian. I am 47 and have only known peace and freedom.

I have choices.

I honor those who died or suffered trying to make changes in their world and mine.

I have never known war and hope I never will.