Carol Baldwin
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Wakaw Recorder
The National War Museum states that war and conflict have profoundly shaped the country and its people, and today’s Canada exists in part because of the service and sacrifice of the members of its Armed Forces.
In striving for a more peaceful world, it is important to remember and reflect upon the contributions of the men and women who have served in the military. Formal records can describe the size and strength of armies, military strategy, and the outcome of battles and, while such information is vital, to fully appreciate military history it is necessary to attempt to understand the human face of war. Loss of comrades, extreme living conditions, intense training, fear, and mental, spiritual and physical hardship were the realities the individual sailor, soldier and airman experienced in battle.
These wars touched the lives of Canadians of all ages, all races, all social classes. Fathers, sons, daughters, sweethearts: they were killed in action, they were wounded, and thousands who returned were forced to live the rest of their lives with the physical and mental scars of war.
Those who remained at home in Canada also served. They worked in factories, in voluntary service organizations, wherever they were needed. They did without. They waited. For those born during peacetime, until the start of the war in the Ukraine, all wars seemed far removed from Canadian daily life.
The Canadians who go off to war in distant lands do so in the belief that the values and beliefs enjoyed by Canadians are being threatened and that the rights of the innocent are being trampled. By remembering their service and their sacrifice, we recognize the tradition of freedom these men and women fought to preserve.
In the First World War, the Canadians’ first major battle occurred at Ypres, Belgium, on April 22, 1915. Within 48 hours at Ypres and St. Julien, a third of the Canadians were killed. In April 1917, when they won a major victory at Vimy Ridge, more than ten thousand casualties were recorded in six days.
When the Second World War was over, more than 42,000 had given their lives. At the attack on the French port of Dieppe, out of a force of 4,963 Canadians, 3,367 were killed, wounded, or became POWs. On June 6, 1944, D-Day, Canadians were on the front lines of the Allied forces who landed on the coast of Normandy. All three Canadian services (navy, army, and air force) shared in the assault. Approximately 14,000 Canadians landed on Juno Beach and suffered 1,074 casualties (including 359 fatalities).
By 1950, Canadian soldiers were mobilized on behalf of the United Nations (UN) to defend South Korea against an invasion by North Korea. When the hostilities ended in 1953, Canadians stayed as part of the peacekeeping force. Of the 26,791 Canadians who served in the Korean War and the approximately 7,000 who continued to serve between the cease-fire and the end of 1955 when Canadian soldiers were repatriated home, there were 1,558 casualties, 516 fatal.
With the remains of Canadian service personnel left overseas in Commonwealth cemeteries for much of Canada’s history, Canadians at home commemorated them with local memorials, by naming parks, streets and geographical features after soldiers or battles, erected plaques, and promised never to forget the service and sacrifice. Many prominent local and national war memorials were erected in the wake of the First World War, as Canadians honoured those who lost their lives in this brutal conflict. Three important war sites and monuments were unveiled in the 1920s and 1930s: Beaumont Hamel (1925) and the Vimy Memorial both in France (1936), and the National War Memorial in Ottawa (1939).
Today the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which was erected on May 28, 2000, and contains the remains of an unidentified Canadian soldier from the First World War repatriated and buried in a tomb, rests in front of the National War Memorial in Ottawa. The Tomb became a symbol for all those soldiers from all branches of the Canadian Armed Forces who have given their lives in service to Canada and acts as a gravesite for those who have no known grave.
The annual day of commemoration for Canada’s war dead began after the First World War, when it was first observed as Armistice Day, in 1919. “Armistice” means the formal stopping of a war, like the end of the fighting of the First World War at 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918. In Canada, from sea to sea, and in Commonwealth countries around the world, at precisely 1100 hours local time, all businesses, factories, schools, offices and even traffic came to a halt for the two minutes of silence. The Two Minute Silence was started to show support for those who have given their lives through conflict and to reflect on the human cost of war, however, in present times the silence is intended as a time for deeply personal reflection.
For over ten years, Armistice Day was the first Monday in November. An independent MP from British Columbia introduced The Armistice Day Amendment Act in 1931. His bill repealed sections 2 and 3 of The Armistice Day Act which combined Thanksgiving and Armistice Day into a joint observance on the Monday of the week in which November 11th fell and substituted a clause which fixed November 11th as Armistice Day. Another change that occurred in 1931, was the name change from Armistice Day to Remembrance Day.
Jonathan Vance wrote for Canada’s History in 2014, that commemorating the wars is not about celebrating conflict; it is about remembering that there are values worth sacrificing for. “We are engaged by a curiosity about ordinary people who, seventy-five or a hundred years ago, found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. We wonder about the young man in uniform who smiles down from the old photograph in the high school. About the family whose grief is manifest in the glorious stained-glass window in the church. About the young woman who trained to be a nurse in the hospital and whom war robbed of a career of compassion and caring. The coming years of commemoration can have meaning if we as a society decide that such people don’t deserve to be forgotten. Behind each name is a life, behind each photo, a person worth knowing. Remembering is our obligation, but also our privilege.” (https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/military-war/remembrance)
Why remember? We must remember. If we do not, the sacrifice of those one hundred thousand Canadian lives will be meaningless. They died for us, for their homes and families and friends, for a collection of traditions they cherished and a future they believed in; they died for Canada. The meaning of their sacrifice rests with our collective national consciousness; our future is their monument. (Heather Robertson, A Terrible Beauty, The Art of Canada at War. Toronto, Lorimer, 1977)
