On November 11, remembering for a just peace...
MONTREAL, Canada, Fall 1967: I remember the feel of the cool fall air on my bare knees, as I walked to school in my pinafore-dress-white-blouse uniform. The nip of the wind against my skin got me moving fast towards the warmth of the building and my classroom that held a desk of my very own.
BANBURY, England, Fall 1973: I remember the creamy custard poured by the school-lunch ladies, out of white enamel jugs — large, the ladies (from my perspective, as a short 13-year-old) and the jugs (never holding enough). The custard, sweet, warm, the flavour of comfort to make the pudding (think Bake-Off sponge) taste delicious.
And I remember the fact of learning, the fun of my friends, and the frantic pace of the field hockey games that left my fingers so cold I could barely unbutton my skirt-and-Airtex-blouse Phys Ed uniform. I want to remember that I loved those games. I shall remember that I did.
What I cannot remember is any fear, any frights, any famine. My childhood and young adulthood was love and peace, safety and security. And my life still is.
WINNIPEG, Canada, November 11, 2025: Wars of many kinds rage, still, around the world. So, on this Remembrance Day, I remember my good fortune, and I send love and gratitude to every person who has served their country to fight for the freedoms I have always been privileged to know… and I send love and peace around the whole of this poor benighted world of ours.
May we honour the sacrifices.
May we respect the gains they have brought.
May we, every day, do every single thing we can — big or small —
to keep those gains alive and true for every single one of us,
no matter where we live, whom we love, or what we look like.
***
Baruch Spinoza,
Theologico-Political Treatise
1670
Volker Türk,
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
March 26, 2025
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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.
Poppies/field photo by Laura M Goodsell on Unsplash
In Flanders Fields
ReplyDeleteBY JOHN MCCRAE
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47380/in-flanders-fields
ReplyDeleteThank you for your beautiful words. It has been ten years since I retired from the Canadian Armed Forces. My views have since changed on armed conflict, however, history has not. The ultimate sacrifice has been paid by all: adversary and ally. Men and women across the globe and all nations who thought they were right and others wrong. I respectfully remember them all.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this thoughtful reflection.
ReplyDeleteMy heart is always heavy on Remembrance Day. I am forever grateful for the sacrifices made by people and animals so that I may have the freedoms and privileges with which I live.
ReplyDeleteOh the animals, Shannon. How right you are. The animals who gave their life, too. I remember them, also.
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/07/animal-victims-first-world-war
Thank you Amanda for this thoughful reminder. We are indeed blessed to have grown up in relative peace with only echoes of war from around the world. I love the quote from Baruch Spinoza. I wish it was taught in schools that the virtue of peace is a universal human right.
ReplyDeleteI feel so much pain for the people who have served and it is the economically disadvantaged who are most likely to be used as cannon fodder. War is tragic, it's a failure of diplomacy. It hurts and what hurts the most is that wars are very deliberately created and to make some people very, very wealthy. Heartbreaking.
ReplyDelete