Let We Forget: Remembrance Day 2019

© R.L. 

Today is the day we set aside to remember, acknowledge, and thank the heroes of Canada. 

The Indian, French, and English Canadians who threw aside the religious and cultural differences and fought the invaders in 1812. 

The Canadians who dropped everything and went to the trenches, the planes, or the ships in 1914, who fought and died for freedom for five terrible years, who gave everything to protect their land and their people. 

The Canadians who banded with France and England and the rest of Europe against power-hungry countries in 1939, who fought the enemy in planes and ships and submarines and tanks and trenches, who endured a gruelling six years of horrible warfare. 

The Canadians who fought for peace and safety in Afghanistan in 2001. 

The Canadians who have died for their country, in any year.   

We will never know the names of all these heroes. But we will never forget their sacrifice, nor what they fought for. We will stand by our mother country. We will accept our cultural differences. We will embrace the vastness of this country and the tremendous differences between its people. We will stand united, as Canadians.

And we will pray for our country and our people. May the sacrifice of these heroes be not in vain.  

“With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

“Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

“They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe. 

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

“They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables at home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam. 

“But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night; 

“As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.”