Stephen Vance, Editor
Today is Remembrance Day. A time when we as a nation (as an entire Commonwealth in fact) take some time to stop and reflect on war and the countrymen (and women) who we have lost in battle, defending freedom.
I’ve never been personally touched by war. Like many in this fine nation, I am the first generation of my family born in Canada, I have no friends or relatives who have served in the Canadian military, let alone seen battle, and there has never been a time in my life where I (or now my children) would have been expected to step up and go off to war, to fight the good fight.
My grandfather served in the British military prior to moving himself, my grandmother, and my mother, who was just a young girl at the time, to Canada. My grandfather never went to war, though his service in the British military is the reason that my mother was born in Egypt – a fact that has caused her plenty of frustration when trying to obtain visas in order to visit certain countries. I have a small black and white photo in a frame sitting on a bookshelf of my grandfather in his military uniform sitting on a motorcycle in the Egyptian desert. So on Remembrance Day each year, I have no war hero uncle to honour, no buddies who went off to war and didn’t return, but I do have an enormous amount of respect for the men and women who are members of our Canadian military, and I don’t envy the orders that they might at some point have to follow.
Canada should be proud of our military and its history on the world scene, and we should also be proud of the leaders we have had throughout our history who haven’t gone looking for battles to join, and in fact have even had the fortitude to say no a time or two when allies have wanted us to join them in battle.
In many ways, it’s a charmed life here in Canada, which is why I think it is important to not only take some time on November 11 to reflect on the wars and heroes of the past, but to also reflect on the millions of people on this planet today, at this very moment, for whom war is a daily reality.
From Afghanistan to Iraq, to Syria, to the Somali civil war, to the Boko Haram insurgency in Africa, millions of our fellow humans endure the violence and sorrow that accompanies war each and every day of their lives. Millions upon millions of lives have been lost in just the current, ongoing conflicts around the world.
There is no glory in war, I don’t care what anyone says. The best wars are wars averted in my opinion, and I suspect that this is one of the lessons that war has taught us, but as a world-wide civilization, we haven’t exactly embraced the advice.
Many nations have learned that war is best avoided, including our own. Our military has largely been used as peacekeepers in my lifetime, and that suits me just fine.
On this Remembrance Day, I’ll be reflecting on Canada’s war heroes of the past, I’ll be appreciating how fortunate I am to have been born in a country where we appreciate the horror of war, and where we avoid it at all costs, and I will also be thinking about the millions of my fellow humans around the world who don’t have the luxury of taking the time to remember war as if it were a thing of the past.
