These photos were taken November 10th as I walked to picked Ullie up from school. That morning, I had attended the Remembrance Day assembly, which was very moving. The principal explained the basic Canadian Remembrance day traditions--singing the anthem while facing the flag, two minutes of silence to remember the dead, the reading of "On Flander's Fields", and the playing of "Taps" on the bugle. Every child and teacher in the school wore a poppy, some of them hand-made.So when I asked Ullie to stop for the two minutes of silence on Nov. 11, he knew just what to do and why. He was having a playdate with a friend and ironically, they were playing a game called World of Warcraft. I stopped too. I stood downstairs and listened to the radio silence on CBC 1. I was struck at how CBC radio unites us as a country. Even though it was a rebroadcast because of the differences in the time zones, I felt connected to the other provinces where similar ceremonies were happening in towns and cities all accross Canada. In that silence, I thought of the sheer number of war victims around the world and the people in Afghanistan who are suffering right now.
Simple traditions. Even the kindergarten class learns about "what the poppies say." It's good to learn about what silence says as well.
2 comments:
Remembrance Day makes my heart ache. I don't wear a poppy. I turn off the radio. I am not interested in memorialising militarism. I appreciate that you made an attempt to speak of civilian war dead in Afghanistan. But I don't see media or government doing that (although a piece in last saturday's Globe and Mail on memory work in Germany, Russia and other places, was heartening. I find in Canada Remembrance day is full of forgetting of the corporate underpinnings of war, of truly wasted lives - soldiers and civilians - and of the horrific and unnecessary bodily and economic cost of our presence in Afghanistan. Remembrance Day, as far as I can see, is all about justification of war.
For an interesting counter-narrative, check out iraqbodycount.org
I knew I'd get called on this. Yes, I think this year people are talking more about the civilians and how impossible it is to recognize their suffering in a one hour ceremony with two minutes of silence. I think now that the Canadian WW1 vets are all dead but one, the focus is turning more onto the civilian toll. I certainly heard more people talking about the civilians this year.
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