Firstly, I want to say to the Grade 8's that I wish you all the very best in Art and that I thoroughly enjoyed your work in Drama! Please make sure you check the posted marks and let me know if I've made a mistake. And thank you all for your creativity and hard work in class.
As most of you know, Wednesday is Remembrance Day. It is a day to think about all the Canadians who have made sacrifices in war so that we could live in such a safe and free place. This year, especially, we have the recent election and exchange of power to remind us that we are so very lucky to live in such a place. Mr. Harper did not, for a moment, consider trying to hold on to power but understood that the people (all of us as Canadians) had spoken and, as many democracy lovers would say, "the voters are never wrong". I am proud of many things about Canada and this is one of them -- our love for "order and good government". They may seem like rather dull virtues, but I think there is something to be said for dullness. I don't think a battle is dull but I wouldn't want to live in one.
We will have our remembrance ceremony tomorrow at school. Remember to be respectful and take a moment to think about what it would be like to have to fight in a war, to have to climb up out of your trench and run forward and hope you wouldn't be killed. I can't imagine. I have told many of you that my father was a Canadian soldier in World War 2 -- he signed up in 1939 and served in Europe until 1946. He was a guy who liked to tell stories and make jokes and laugh, but my uncle said when my dad came back from the war, he hardly spoke a word for almost a year. He had trouble sleeping and when he did fall asleep, he would wake up screaming. My dad never spoke about this to us. Most of his stories about the war were funny -- about the crazy adventures they had when they were on leave and how bad the food was. He did tell us one story that wasn't funny. He was part of the Canadian army that liberated France. They all knew the war was close to ending -- he said you could tell the Germans were on their last legs. It was early one morning and my dad got up early and had taken a bucket to get water to wash his face. He hadn't taken his gun. He was washing his face in the bucket when he saw something moving on the horizon. His eyes were full of water and he couldn't make out what was moving at first. He finally realized it was a man on a bicycle. Then, to his abject terror, he realized it was a German soldier. He knew he didn't have time to run and get his gun, so he just stood there as the German soldier approached. "Nicht schiessen!" the German soldier said as he got close enough for my father to see him clearly. (That means, "don't shoot" - my father thought he should say the same to the German.) The young man on the bike got off and came up to my father and handed him his gun, which my father took. Somehow the German soldier was able to communicate to my dad that the war was over and that he was surrendering. My dad said his hands were shaking as he offered the German a cigarette and smoked one himself. And when my dad told us the story, he said, "that's how I found out the war was over". And he cried. My dad didn't cry very often, and he said, through his tears, "I don't know why I'm crying now. I didn't cry when it happened." I always think of my dear little dad (he was a small man, only 5'7") when I attend the ceremony at the Port Moody cenotaph. He was a young guy who had grown up in the hard times of the 1930's in Saskatchewan and had never been out of Canada. I will never know what it was like for him, but it must have been awful. Thank goodness he was able to recover and move on and build a life with us and my mother.
I hope many of you will try to go out to the Richmond cenotaph to observe Remembrance Day. Those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it.
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