Note: This was originally written as a field trip journal response in my course 'Legal Education' at McGill in November 2011. Opinions reflect a frustration with the lack of recognition of Remembrance Day in Québec.
In seeking unique perspectives for our field trip experiences, I decided to write about my observations during the recent Remembrance Day ceremonies on campus at McGill. I thought it relevant for a few reasons; first of all I believe that you can understand a lot about a society in how it observes history, historical decisions and the impact of those decisions. I also believe that a well-informed view of history, in concert with many aspects of our society is imperative when approaching the law, societal issues, and life in general. Finally, I thought that this would be a good topic of discussion or reflection in the days following Remembrance Day.
The reason why Remembrance Day interested me personally as a topic was two-fold. First of all, the observance of the day in Montréal is starkly different than in any of the other cities or provinces where I have attended ceremonies. Secondly, earlier this year I had the opportunity to live and work in Northern France for three months, exploring and guiding visitors at two Canadian Historic Sites that are comprised of battlefields of the First World War. That experience has made the act of remembrance much more poignant for me and, again, marks a stark difference to observance of the day here in Québec.
I am from Atlantic Canada, where Remembrance Day is a community-wide commemoration of the sacrifices made by soldiers and their families during times of war over the past century. Schools, businesses, banks, etc. close for the day, and entire communities attend ceremonies at cenotaphs: not just in major towns or cities, but also in villages and communities all across the region. In fact, other than Ontario and Québec, every province and territory in Canada, as well as the federal government, recognizes Remembrance Day as a holiday. From when I was a kid until my most recent Remembrance Day on PEI, I remember veterans marching in a parade while people lined the streets and applauded the men and women who had once put everything on the line to join the war effort. The logic seemed simple: they risked their lives and sacrificed years for our government and society. The least we could do was “sacrifice” an hour of our time to remember their contribution and to honour those who did not make it back home to their families. Increasingly, veterans no longer march, but are pushed in wheelchairs or ride in buses, but the ultimate destination is usually the Legion, where people clamber over each other to thank the veterans and to buy them a drink.
In Northern France and Belgium, this form of remembrance never ends. Thousands of cemeteries and monuments dot the swath of land that, between 1914 and 1918, was literally ripped apart and leveled under artillery barrages like nothing this world had ever seen. A continuous trench line stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea, and all along that 800 kilometre ribbon of defence lines and redoubts, towns and villages were decimated, some never to seen again. In Ypres, Belgium, you can still find Canadian flags hung from storefronts or in windows, honouring the men who defended the Ypres salient at the cost of thousands of lives during that war. The Menin Gate, in Ypres, has hosted a Last Post and wreath-laying ceremony every night since 1928 to remember the war dead and the ˜55,000 names of those KIA/BNR (Killed In Action/Body Never Recovered) that line the walls of the gate. They still find thousands of bombs in the countryside every year and, often enough, uncover the bodies of men who died in that conflict, now nearly 100 years later. Three full military funerals have taken place in Northern France this year for Canadian soldiers who died in the Great War, two of whom were identified and had members of their family present for the burial. Each was also attended by Canadian and French soldiers, visitors and officials, as well as a plethora of mayors and councilors from the neighbouring villages and towns. The memory of both World Wars is very much a part of the fabric of the communities in this region, and they are not soon to be forgotten. I spoke to countless citizens during my time there, and every one of them had a story to tell about how the war affected them, their family, or their community.
Indeed, the war transformed all the communities it touched, including those in Canada that saw 620,000 individuals participate in WWI, and 1.1 million more 25 years later during WWII. For me, it is unbelievable to think that some of those same communities have moved on and now choose not to recognize such a transformative event in our history. On my 20-minute walk to McGill for the ceremony on Remembrance Day, I saw two people wearing poppies. Everyone else seemed oblivious to the fact that it was approaching the 11th hour of November 11th.
When I arrived at the Roddick Gates, MUNACA had assembled in a large crowd. Unable to enter the premises due to the existing injunction, they none-the-less stood in observance of the ceremony, each wearing poppies and their MUNACA pins. Though it could be construed as a political statement, I found this to be a respectful and appropriate way to commemorate the day. Indeed, much of the union movement in Canada owes its success to strikes that were a direct effect of the First World War and of a workforce dealing with the influx of thousands of men returning from battlefields and new-found worker’s rights for women. There were also poppies being distributed by people at the gates, and so there were a lot more poppies on campus than I had seen on the streets of Montréal.
The crowd was more or less solemn, especially when the formal ceremony began, but some people continued to move in and around the ceremony. This included several photographers who lacked any regard for decorum, walking around during moments of silence and snapping pictures mere inches from soldier’s faces as they stood at attention. As the ceremony progressed, the usual sounds of Montréal of course continued, with honking horns and the foot traffic around McGill being difficult distractions to ignore. However, a 21-gun salute from four artillery guns in the middle of campus announced the ceremony to the city, making the observance hard to ignore, even for those most deeply wrapped up in their own little world.
The ceremony ran quite the same as the dozens I’ve been to before: ‘O Canada’ was played, followed by the recital of The Ode of Remembrance. A member of the military band then played Taps, followed by the lament from a military bagpiper, and finally Reveille was played after the observance of two minutes silence at 11:00. A priest, minister and rabbi read prayers in English and French, and then the laying of the wreaths began. These wreaths were laid on behalf of veterans of WWI and WWII, the Korean War, conflicts since 1953, Peace Keepers, and of Silver Cross mothers, the Federal, Provincial and Municipal governments, and many other organizations and governments. It is, when all is said and done, a fairly short and simple ceremony, but it is also often very touching.
Unfortunately, I had difficulty this year not being preoccupied by the lack of regard for the ceremony and its meaning. I certainly understand why people balk at the idea of a Remembrance Day ceremony. Some liken it to a glorification of war and of death. Others see it as troublesome that the tragedies of WWI and WWII are often now linked to current exploits in Afghanistan and elsewhere, that many Canadians do not see as our battles to fight. Still others cite the imperial nature and opposition on the part of many Quebeckers in both world conflicts as a reason not to observe any remembrance of our war dead.
Certainly it is difficult to rationalize the factors that led to the World Wars, and indeed, to most acts of war. It is also undeniable that the major conflicts that saw Canadians fight and die in the 20th century were, in many ways, not our wars to fight. Imperialism and colonialism is one of the greatest factors and tragedies of the First World War, seeing hundreds of thousands of men thrust into battle and certain death without any input from their homelands in the European colonies of Africa and Asia. But none of these, in my mind, reduce the need to remember those men and women who were affected by the unparalleled human misery and destruction of the wars.
While the reasoning and justification for those conflicts remain a dicey issue in many ways, the nobility with which these men and women signed up and served is not to be underscored. Along with everything else, it was the generations of Canadians that preceded ours that earned, through their service and sacrifice, the society that we now enjoy. The senselessness that led to the slaughter of a generation of young men in the Great War and to the deaths of millions of soldiers and civilians only two and a half decades later should be precisely what encourages us to remember, not what gives us an excuse to forget.
Often in our society and in the law, we are trained to look at the past as something to learn lessons from, but I feel that increasingly, this leads to a sense of superiority over past ages. Sometimes we forget that those who lived out our history were also rational beings, clouded by the forces of their time no doubt, but no less so than we are now. The agency that brought about war was human agency; the difficulties they dealt with as they approached war were the same difficulties we grapple with as a society today. Of course, the signals that we have fallen into the same path will not be personified by the likes Adolf Hitler again, but the evil that creeps into our world by passive ignorance is the same arrogance and superiority complex that we develop by ignoring our history. At risk of sounding incredibly cliché: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
The men and women who served our country and died for what they believed in during the wars of the last century were all victims of a world bound by oligarchs and greed. I remember them because every one of them deserved better. I remember because I hope to never be put in their situation. I remember, perhaps most importantly, because I do not ever want to be part of a society that, through action or inaction, forces people like them into a situation like that again.
