With Halloween now behind us, we now turn our thoughts to a more somber occasion: Remembrance Day.
2019 is sandwiched in between two major milestones — the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, which occurred last year, and the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, which will be observed in 2020.
It was the end of the First World War that saw the adoption of Armistice Day as an annual memorial for those who had fallen within that conflict, including more than 60,000 Canadians. Some of the traditions associated with Remembrance Day are a holdover from the original holiday, like the sounding of the Last Post and two minutes of silence at the 11th hour.
But it was the Second World War that elevated Remembrance Day (which officially saw a name change within Canada during the 1930s) as an occasion to remember the fallen from all wars, which now included 42,000 Canadian war dead.
That includes the Korean War, which resulted in 516 deaths among the Canadian Armed Forces, and the conflict in Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of 159 Canadian soldiers and left hundreds more injured.
But if Remembrance Day was simply for the purpose of honouring the fallen, then we wouldn’t need public ceremonies and school contests. The families who lost loved ones would probably hold private memorials, but there wouldn’t be public ceremonies, poster contests and students laying flags and poppies on the graves of veterans.
The dual purpose of Remembrance Day is to remind us of the horrors of war, in the (faint) hope that we will learn from our mistakes and one day bring about an end to all wars.
War is not glorious or honourable or exciting. It may be necessary, but only as a last resort. War is ugly, and even those who survive it are often scarred for life, physically and mentally.
Sadly, we seem no closer to the goal of a world free of war than we were ten years ago or fifty years ago and even a century ago.
Granted, the number of conflicts currently raging across the globe are relatively few. But now we live in fear of new wars in the Middle East, or a more destructive conflict with North Korea backed by China.
There are also new fears of a conflict closer to home, as political divides in the U.S. leave the country more fractured than it has been in a long time. Republicans and evangelicals faced with the impeachment of Donald Trump now regularly invoke the possibility of a civil war in their rhetoric.
In the face of such divisions and seeming inevitability of new wars, it may seem like Remembrance Day has lost its purpose.
But in truth, we need to remind ourselves of the horrors of war and why it must be avoided, lest we add new names and larger numbers to the list of Canadians that have fallen to war.
