A Pittance of Time

One of my oldest friends sent me this link and I want to share it with the world since tomorrow is Remembrance Day. Turn on your sound.




Yesterday was the yearly church Remembrance Day Service in our new church and I can only remember one other time being so moved by Remembrance Day. I was in high school, with 1100 other students, dressed in my cadet uniform, lining the pristine halls as we faced the Remembrance plaques and the flags which always took centre position outside the main office. We stood absolutely silent and listened to the scriptures, the prayers, the trumpet sounds and the words of remembrance. I thought of my uncle Frank, and in my heart I finally realized what he had relinquished with his life when he was blown out of that fox hole in Italy before I was born.

And I felt the tears start.

Yesterday those tears came again as I took part in the music at church. The hymns have never seemed so meaningful. Our anthem was inspiring to sing. The organist's offertory was a medley of well chosen message songs, which he played by ear. Everyone in the sanctuary wore red, some more, some less, but all proudly displayed the poppy. My young nephew and another teenager read John McCrae's In Flanders Fields. And the sermon was a video which told of the 180 kilometers from Trenton Air Force Base to Toronto where our soldiers who have fallen in Afghanistan take their final journey--with their families--along Highway 401, Canada's Highway of Heroes(For those who don't know, this is the main highway which threads across Ontario, this small section of which has been named the Highway of Heroes.) In Toronto, the soldiers' bodies are autopsied and then released to their waiting families.

This video told of the fifty overpasses along that stretch of highway, each one loaded with Canadians and Canadian flags paying tribute to the soldiers. We saw fire trucks, stopped on the bridges above with firemen standing on top, saluting the sad parage below. We saw single persons standing still and alone in honour of their fallen countrymen and women. We saw police cars parked at the side of 401, their officers standing alongside at attention.

And all of this takes a long time. It is over 180 kilometers to reach Toronto. The nation's traffic stops and waits, and pays tribute to Canada's heroes every time the bodies return home. We, as a nation, have now made the transition from being the post war peacekeepers of the world to warriors once again winning and losing on the world's battlefields. And whether we agree or disagree with Canada's role in Afghanistan, we stop and we pay tribute to those who have stepped up to help the rest of the world.

Tomorrow, take a pittance of time and remember.