We have more to think about this Remembrance Day than the dead of two world wars. We need to think about what they died for. From North America, our soldiers crossed oceans to die. Our sailors took them on these journeys and many died in cold waters. Our airplanes went to war and airmen died in coffins with wings. It was unlikely that they died to preserve the peace, order and good governance of democracy?
It is unlikely they thought that much about it. There was not much thought for democracy in those years. Many went for the adventure in foreign lands. They left behind dull, boring jobs, living in the family home and the depression and the dullness of life in the early twentieth century. War was promoted by the propaganda of the movies. War was an adventure.
Canadians went to war against the Kaiser and against a Nazi despot and Japan’s emperor. And yet, we were credited with the saving of mum’s apple pie and democracy. Did we ever think of democracy in those days? We went to vote in large numbers then. We saw voting as a responsibility. It was part of our way of life. And the servicemen and women who did return from foreign wars slotted themselves back into the regimes of domesticity, employment and child rearing. Those we left behind in foreign soil earned this day—the eleventh day of the eleventh month and on the eleventh hour—for remembrance.
But the monuments we have built do not tell the story. To the monuments of War One, we chiselled the words for War Two. And for too long, we feared the need for a War Three.
Maybe War Three was a world-wide pandemic. Do we need remembrance for those who succumbed in that struggle? Or those, in a position of authority who failed us? And, why did this battle leave behind such anger? Why, instead of strength, are we showing darkening divisions in our democracy, hate instead of respect and political divisions that need to be breached.
Is it democracy itself that is failing? Does the anger replace voting? Does democracy fade as we challenge authority? We need to look with optimism where we are going.
Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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