tallperson

It also happens to be my birthday and my son's birthday. But the poppies are as explained above.

Judy in Calgary

November 11th, 1945 was the date on which Germany and the Allied countries signed an armistice that ended hostilities on the Western Front. The armistice was signed at 11 o'clock in the morning -- the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Since the end of World War I, the Allied countries have observed a holiday that is variously called Armistice Day, Veterans Day, Remembrance Day, and so on.

In some countries, there is a minute of silence at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour. A young Canadian engineer who did a work exchange with the railways in Queensland, Australia in 1999, told me that the train on which he was working came to a stop in honour of the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour.

In 1915 a Canadian doctor serving at the front, John McCrae, wrote a poem that is famous in English-speaking countries. He died of pneumonia at Boulogne in 1918. Here is his poem: Many people wear a red plastic or fabric poppy on their lapel during the couple of weeks leading up to Remembrance Day, as it's called in Canada. The sale of the poppies raises funds to help veterans who are in need.
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DaveLovesDee

1918 Judy.

I am all for a one or two minute silence in rememberance, but why do some Canadian businesses close for the day?

Judy in Calgary

Oops. Thanks.

It's a statutory holiday in some provinces.
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Souvenir

I thought it was a Federal holiday. Wouldn't that make it a stat holiday everywhere?

dbd33

They are not in any sense my troops. They, the Canadian or British troops today, are members of a professional volunteer army engaged in pointless conflicts for the sake of improved diplomatic negotiations with a bankrupt regime. That they are being killed may be awful but it is what they signed up to do. The situation of those troops today is not in any way comparable to a conscripted army fighting a defined enemy either in defence of the homeland or in immediate fulfilment of a treaty obligation. If people chose to join the military then good luck to them but they are no more or less deserving of public admiration and respect than someone who choose to join the law society or the Toronto Transit Commission.

I think it a misappropriation of the poppy to claim it to somehow to relate to people serving in the military today. That's just cheap politics.

Atlantic Xpat

Nope. It is a Provincial holiday here on the Rock but pretty much not everywhere else to the best of my knowledge.

Souvenir

I was looking at the Canadian Heritage website, which gives it as a holiday at the national level. Maybe that just applies to federal employees. Looking at Wikpedia, it seems that quite a few provinces have it as a stat holiday. QC isn't one of them. I'll likely be forced to take the day off anyway.

iaink

Kind of out of character for you Novo? You are either trolling, or totally missing the point. One thing Ive found talking to the old soldiers at the rememberance parades is that they dont hold a grudge against those they were fighting, they were just following orders too. There is almost a sort of camaraderie among all those caught up in the whole bloody mess.

Rememberance day remembers all those who fought. Granted, the funds from poppy sales go to the legion here, but for me and many others its not about the money.

iaink

I cant imagine remembrance day having quite the same impact without WW1 and WW2. Conscripted troops certainly put a different spin on it for me over and above professional soldiers being sent to local squabbles. Which is not to say that I don't hugely respect the modern soldiers for what they do and have to put up with, but it is different somehow for me.

Remembrance day should definitely be non political.


FWIW it used to be a holiday in Ontario, kids used to get the day off school to attend services etc. Now some still attend (as is right), but I think its back to class afterwards. I take time off work to attend.

WW1 was a long time ago, but to bring it into focus, my neighbour Alice, who turn 100 in December, lost two of her brothers in that war, and two came back and were never the same again, one lost a leg, the other lost his mind. Thankfully I cant imagine us decending into a situation like that again. Now, she and her generation wont be around to remind us of these things much longer, and it will be up to us to ensure that we never forget how bad things can be. We take so much for granted.

Souvenir

Quite. My father was badly wounded in Burma in WWII. He never held a grudge.

I think it important to remember the very many ordinary people killed in both world wars.

Oakvillian

thank you for that insightful commentary. I would have thought someone of your obvious intellect would understand the purpose of remembrance - not only to recollect, primarily for the benefit of the surviving comrades and relatives, the dead on all sides in past conflict; but also to try to remind our current crop of politicians that war is a hideous thing and should not be entered into lightly.

It's a shame that particular message doesn't seem to have gotten through to the current US administration, and that other Western governments are too lily-livered to stand in defiance of US foreign policy, but political positioning is absolutely not, and never has been the point of Armistice Day, just as much as jingoistic nationalism is not the point either.

As George Santayana said (and the full quote is rather better than the oft-misquoted abbreviations):
"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Souvenir

Given that he posted at nearly midnight, it's a fair bet that insight and intellect had gone out of the window.

iaink

Are you suggesting he might have been "Tired and emotional"....

Souvenir

Yes. I can see him expressing that opinion but the abusive remark is not the hallmark of someone behaving rationally.