"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Friday 11 November 2011

Remembrance

I was at the Cenotaph. There was a good crowd in attendance. Traffic was stopped. Two minutes of silence observed. For me, that 's the significance of the day.

When I was a child ,the sound of Big Ben's chimes were broadcast across the land. at the hour of eleven. a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Children in  classrooms.stood beside their desks and bowed their heads for two minutes of silence.

In the streets, traffic stood still .I imagined London's cab drivers cabs leaving cabs and standing to attention beside them.

In Aurora this morning, the sky was clear and  brilliant  in the morning sunshine. The nice young police officer who let me park in the Canadian Tire parking lot entrance opposite the Cenotaph, told me there was snow north of Newmarket and two inches of the stuff in Barrie.

In  the U.K., the sky would most likely be leaden. In year's past, the first of London's pea soup fogs would  be drifting through  the streets.

We are in the tenth decade of the time when the first Armistices day was marked, to denote a nation's sorrow.

The war was over. Almost an entire generation of men in the flower of youth had  been wiped out and loved ones  devastated.

Thousands of others, missing limbs or disabled by mustard gas became familiar sights.

Years passed. Life went on. The 1914/18 war was resumed and yet another generation of youth was annihilated  during the 1939/45 war,  even more horrifying than the first if possible, with  new and terrible weapons invented for the purpose.

Whoever thought of  people gathering throughout the world to  mark two minutes of silence to remember the awful sacrifice, did a good thing.

It  has not  ended  wars.

But it makes us pause and dwell upon those who paid the price.  

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I,too,love the minutes of silence. But this year
different radio stations went all out with the trumpets
and that creates chills. Too bad the sound is always
associated war and death. Another new angle this
year was that grade school students went to the
military bases for the services. The grandkid was
there and doesn't like his sax so much.
Like the policeman's funeral in Newmarket, it is refreshing to see all ages thinking.

Anonymous said...

Not knowing how and when you left Scotland , I
wondered if bagpipes played a part in your memories ?
Everything I have read about the Scots who came to
North America indicates that the pipes travelled with
them and were present even during the American
Civil War. If this is a disrespectful question I
apologize.

Anonymous said...

pipes & drums, not a violin in sight. all well on the
battle field. So very sad.

Anonymous said...

Rest easy. If the last bunch were still in, you
would have had to pay admission to a non profit
group twice !