Eight decades after the end of the deadliest military conflict in history, Canadians paused for Remembrance Day ceremonies Tuesday to honour those who put their lives on the line for their country.
In chilly Ottawa, next to a National War Memorial lightly dusted with snow, Second World War veteran John Preece, 99, said he still remembers trudging through the muck in poor weather during the war.
“It was muddy and cold and raining and snowing,” he said. “It wasn’t very nice.”
Preece, who served as a private, was wounded when a sniper bullet struck his arm as he was operating a Bren light machine-gun in Holland in April 1945.
He is one of just a few thousand still-living Canadian veterans from that pivotal war. He said he does not personally know any other living veterans of that conflict.
“When I go to the old regiment in Toronto to visit, there’s nobody. Everybody’s gone,” he said.
“How many people do you know who are 100 or more?”
Veterans Affairs Canada estimates that as of this year, there are 3,691 surviving Canadian veterans of the Second World War — 667 women and 3,024 men.
“The events of the Second World War are very rapidly moving from the realm of lived history of people you can talk to … into history where you can’t talk to the people who remember them,” said Jeff Noakes, Second World War historian at the Canadian War Museum.
The stories of that war — from the bloody horrors of combat to the aftermath of postwar economic uncertainty — are passing from the realm of living to recorded history as the number of veterans who remember those days grows smaller.
“Even if you were five years old when the war ended, you’d be 85 now.” said Noakes.
“So it’s this big shift from knowing a neighbour or a family member or somebody you could talk to about this into … moving out of the experience of lived history.”
Get daily National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
Wayne MacCulloch, a retired major and former peacekeeper who did tours in Haiti and Bosnia, said more civilians should take the time to speak with veterans about their experiences.
He rattled off a series of once-in-a-lifetime experiences from his own military career: being confronted by a machete-wielding crowd in Haiti, detouring into a minefield, getting attacked with chainsaws, finding himself caught in sudden firefights.
“You get the flavour of what it was like to serve when you talk to someone,” he said. “You can see what they experienced in their eyes, and it’s only by getting that real sense of how things actually happen out in Canada’s interests around the globe that you can truly understand what it means.
“And that’s why I always come back for Remembrance Day.”
Silver Cross Mother Nancy Payne laid a wreath during the ceremony in Ottawa on behalf of mothers whose loved ones died in service.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, with his wife Diana, paused briefly as he laid his wreath to flatten out the ribbon at its edge.
Afterward, Carney shook hands with several veterans, including three members of the same family who represent different generations of military service.
Ralph Storey turned 88 on Remembrance Day. He served in his late teens on a NATO deployment in Germany in the 1950s.
He attended the service in Ottawa with his son Ed, a fellow military engineer in his 60s, and grandson Charles, in his 30s, who serves in the navy.
“I’m very proud of all of them,” Ralph said.
Family members of the war dead staked out spots hours in advance in Ottawa, braving cold weather to get a good view of the ceremony at the National War Memorial.
Brian Revet, who said he lost an uncle in the Second World War who served as an aircraft gunner, travelled to Ottawa from Saskatoon for the event.
He arrived at 8 a.m. so he could witness up close a ceremony he has cared about deeply throughout his adult life.
“It’s always meant a lot, ever since I was 16 years old. I’ve never served, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like,” he said.
In a rare turn of events, Gov. Gen. Mary Simon was absent from the ceremony as she recovered from a respiratory virus in hospital.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Wagner stepped in to preside over the ceremony in Ottawa in her place.
An RCMP UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter flew over Ottawa’s ceremony; the RCAF’s CF-18 Hornet fighter jets were grounded due to the weather.
Don Bindon, a 36-year veteran of the RCMP who attended the service in Vancouver dressed in red serge, said his son is in the army and his father served during the Second World War.
Chief Petty Officer, 2nd Class, Matthew Chabassol, also attended the ceremony in Vancouver. He said the day gives him an opportunity to think about friends and family members who have served.
“Some of them aren’t with us anymore,” he said. “It gives me a really strong reminder of the things we have done and accomplished.”
At the service in Halifax, N.S., Boston’s newly reelected Mayor Michelle Wu accompanied Halifax Mayor Andy Fillmore and said she was happy to attend to showcase the enduring relationship between Halifax and Boston.
In Calgary, thousands gathered for the ceremony at The Military Museums, where veterans were given a special place at the front of the audience.
At Toronto’s Old City Hall, Mayor Olivia Chow said Remembrance Day is especially poignant this year, the 100th anniversary of the Toronto Cenotaph, built in the wake of the First World War.
Artillery fire rang out over the sound of bagpipes at Queen’s Park, part of a 21-gun salute.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Industry Minister Mélanie Joly were among those attending the ceremony, which ended with the blare of trumpets following a flyby of two Hercules aircraft.
— With files from Rianna Lim and Sonja Puzic in Toronto, Bill Graveland in Calgary, Ian Young and Wolfgang Depner in Vancouver and Emily Cadloff in Halifax
