The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
On November 11th Canadians all across the country will stop and pay tribute to the men and women killed in Canada's wars and military operations. Some will remember friends and relatives long dead. Others - like yourselves perhaps - will pause in tribute but will really have nothing to remember. For millions of Canadians the poppy has long been the flower of Remembrance. It originally was a reminder of the blood-red flower which grew in the fields where many Canadians died in a place called Flanders. It remains the flower of Remembrance. In schoolrooms across Canada for a number of years students have discussed Remembrance; recognizing the sacrifices which others made for Canada but unsure of how they themselves could respond. What could they do? How could they live up to the expectations of the men and women who gave their lives for Canada and future generations? Today, there is an answer. It was always there only now it can be seen much more clearly. It has to do with unity. Canadian unity is not as strong today as it once was. When men from all parts of Canada came to a place called Vimy Ridge in 1917 everybody said that it was impossible to take the Ridge from the enemy. In a very important battle on a very cold day the Canadians did what nobody thought was possible. They took Vimy Ridge. When the guns stopped, the Canadians were very happy. Not so much for the victory itself but for the difficult thing they had done together. They were proud to be Canadians. Some of them who were wounded and waiting to be shipped to hospital lay on stretchers in tunnels in the earth. They carved maple leaves on the wall. It was a good time to be a Canadian. In another war when the guns stopped at a place called Dieppe, the Canadians suffered a terrible defeat. This time Canadians from East and West shared a defeat. And as the wounded, ragged soldiers were marched away to prison camps, they marched proudly, knowing that they had shared something difficult. It was a sad time to be a Canadian. Thousands of young men from all parts of Canada faced death together at Dieppe. You can see their graves and read their names on the stones. The stones speak eloquently of racial and religious origins. They speak of men with a common cause: Canada. In Canadian schoolrooms today there are students whose parents, or even themselves, remember other wars. Some remember the terrible ordeal of escaping to freedom. To them the poppy can be a symbol of that freedom. But it is important for all of us to remember that unity of Canadians in wartime enables all of us to enjoy freedom. Although Canada now has repatriated her constitution, the spirit of a common cause is lacking. We no longer share difficult things with a sense of unity. The poppy, then, is a reminder of the need: a challenge to each of us to seek out that spirit of unity which sustained our forefathers and our country.
