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Canada's involvement in military conflicts and peacekeeping missions throughout the 20th century and into the 21st has earned our nation's Armed Forces much respect and esteem internationally for their courage and dedication. We, as Canadians, should be both proud of and grateful to our Armed Forces. But there are costs to war, both to Canada and to the rest of the world. We observe Remembrance Day lest we forget the dead: the infinite lives lost, both of soldiers and of civilians. Lest we forget that, countless though they are, each one counted, each was somebody's child. We also observe Remembrance Day lest we forget the survivors: the infinite lives preserved but shattered. Remembrance Day, therefore, is a day of reflection on the events of the past and the state of the present, but it is also a day of reflection on the shape of the future. We observe Remembrance Day lest we forget that the future awaiting us is still to be shaped and that we each have a role to play in shaping it. We observe Remembrance Day lest we forget that we live in a society that reprimands children for fighting in the playground but accepts adults taking out their political differences through guns and bombs. We observe Remembrance Day lest we forget that war is not a game, that although children in this part of the world play with action figures toting plastic guns, more than 300,000 child soldiers worldwide in current armed conflicts are being brutally forced to commit the unspeakable, their innocence killed first and foremost. We observe Remembrance Day lest we forget the futility of the terrible “us versus them” psychology that cripples our world, a world in which they whom we define as “them” are really just an extension of “us” — the human race. We observe Remembrance Day lest we forget the tragically cyclic path that war paves for humanity, a path that can be easily understood by even a most basic analysis of the origins of the conflicts that rage today and their connections to past conflicts. Indeed, the First World War, whose final day is commemorated by Remembrance Day, was supposed to be the “war to end all wars,” was it not? It can be, has been and will be argued that brute force is justified through its ability to achieve immediate results. Perhaps, but what about the long term, both in terms of the permanency of the results achieved and the extra consequences that inevitably arise? What about the terrible price to be paid? What about the future? As Mahatma Gandhi (who victoriously led India's independence movement through purely non-violent means) once said: “An eye for an eye makes the world blind.” Six or seven years ago, when I was in my early teens, I was sitting in the lounge of a men's barbershop, waiting for my brother to finish getting his hair cut. I overheard a conversation between two elderly gentlemen sitting near me. What began as casual small talk between two strangers soon developed into a full-fledged discussion when each man discovered that the other, like himself, was a Second World War veteran. The two exchanged factual details about their military service in Europe — which regiments they had belonged to, which battles they had fought in, and so on. Both said they had been captured by the Germans during their service, with both affirming that they had been treated well as prisoners. The conversation was cut short when the barber, after finishing my brother's hair, called on the next person in line for a haircut, who happened to be one of the two gentlemen. The concluding sentence was uttered by this gentleman as he got up to go. “They say that human beings are the only animals who have the ability to blush. Well, if you ask me, humans are the only ones who have any reason to blush.” I think of that gentleman's words often as I read the daily paper and watch the daily news, while reflecting on how the brutality documented by the television cameras is only a small fraction of the reality of our world. And how the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, dominate the headlines though they might, are just two of the numerous conflicts that rage today across the globe. Lester B. Pearson, former prime minister of Canada, the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize and a First World War veteran, once told a journalist: “You may say that peace isn't a policy, it's a prayer. Maybe. But that prayer should be the ultimate objective of everything we do in our relations with other countries — to avoid conflict and maintain peace.” May we join together in this prayer, on Remembrance Day and beyond. |