I Remember

I remember standing in the cold at as a child watching the Canadian Legion members placed wreaths at the base of the cenitaph ( I never could spell the name properly ! ) in our small town . I am a child of the '50's so we had many hometown vets and I probably knew everyone of them . I don't know what they saw or what they experienced ... some were heroes that fought more then one war on far away lands and others never left Canada  . Every story was unique , some to be told over and over and some never to be mentioned . Some people were mear shells of themselves that were haunted by dreams of times past , some were war brides brought from far countries to a home they knew nothing about and they mourned for the families they lost or left behind and the country that was their homelands . We were raised with Germans , Italians , Japanese , Chinese , the Polish , the Jews and others ... we lived in our small town without prejudism ( or we never knew there was any ! ) and accepted everybody as neighbours  .

 Our small town lost more then one brother , husband , son  and daughter during the wars of the past and we honored them every year on November 11th . We wore our red poppies with pride that the ladies of the Legion came into our classrooms and gave us every year . We were taught to respect our vets and cherish the life we had been gived because of these vets that kept our land free .

 I thank each of the members of the military past and present that have given so much of themselves to keep us free and protect what a great country we have ....


" Least we forget "