Things That Matter - Lest We Forget

Cenotaph, Victory Square, Vancouver

This is where I'll be this morning, to watch Vancouver's Remembrance Day ceremony. I go every year. I'm descended, on my father's side, from a long line of pacifists. Some of them, while objecting to the motivations and machinations of war, still served as stretcher bearers, contributing what they felt, morally, that they could. Men on my mother's side of the family served their country in World War II. One of my cousins served as a peacekeeper in some really hellish places. HWSNBN's father and grandfather both answered the call.

Victory Square, Vancouver

I go to honour them. To honour their commitment to duty, to what they thought was right. I go to remember those who didn't come back. I go to honour those who serve in war-torn places all over the world today.

Statue honouring the war dead of Canadian Pacific Railways, Waterfront Station, Vancouver

And I go in gratitude that because of them, my son is growing up in a peaceful nation, with the freedom to be who he is. May he never need to know anything different.

But I'll teach him to honour, and to be grateful.