|
Written by Lethbridge Herald
|
|
Monday, November 10 2008, 11:01 PM |
Ninety years ago today, the “war to end all wars” officially ended.
At 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, the First World War came to a close, ending a war in which 620,000 Canadians participated and some 68,000 died.
Of course, as history testifies, it proved not to be the end of war. A generation later, the Second World War involved about 1.1 million Canadians, 42,000 of whom died.
Then came the Korean War in the 1950s, featuring 27,000 Canadians and 500 Canadian deaths.
Today, the battleground is Afghanistan, where 14,000 Canadian troops have been involved and 97 have died. In between the wars in Korea and Afghanistan, another 100,000 Canadians participated in peacekeeping missions, and 115 of them lost their lives.
In all, more than 110,000 Canadians have died in the fight to preserve freedom — either our own or someone else’s.
Today, as Canadians participate in Remembrance Day ceremonies across the country, including some two dozen such ceremonies throughout southern Alberta, it must be remembered these events aren’t simply paying tribute to people and wars of the distant past. The thread that weaves its way through history, binding soldiers from different generations, continues to this day. Canadian soldiers continue to put their lives on the line to protect freedoms, just as Canadians through the previous century risked everything for that noble cause.
On this day, the decades that separate soldiers of the present from soldiers of the past fall away and these people are united in the company of brave souls who make sacrifices many of us can’t imagine for an ideal that is often taken for granted.
Today is more than another holiday on the calendar. It’s a reminder to acknowledge the price that was paid — and is still being paid today — by the men and women of our armed forces.
|
