Remembrance Day, for me, has always been more of a tradition with less and less attachment to to the present.
With Covid-19 restrictions forbidding the large public gatherings of previous years, I didn’t go out to stand in a crowd to listen to the veterans lay wreaths in memory of their lost friends and allies, killed in war or dead from the scars it leaves. I did, however, make a point when I was compiling the paper to reflect on the importance of remembering such conflicts, and how the tradition has adapted to the unfortunate causalities of newer wars.
The day originally commemorated those who perished in the First World War, in 1914-1918. The poppy and the well known poem about Flanders fields refers to the Belgian battlefields where many soldiers died for, most tragically, little more than following of alliances.
The veterans from that war are long gone now. The Second World War, with the rise of violent white supremacy in Europe and a new wave of racially-directed atrocities, came and went, and now we honour the last few remaining veterans of that conflict.
My own grandfather, gone for twenty-odd years, was a navyman in that war, on the Canadian Corvette Collingwood.
There’s no shortage of wars to wound and kill soldiers and perpetuate senseless loss of life, and there’s certainly no end to the reasons for them. If anything, the racism that led the Nazis to rise and drive Germany into violent conquest is still alive today, and worth considering.
Whitewater Region is not so distant from racist violence. The Whitewater News’ previous editor, Megan Chase, left her position in part due to racism she suffered in the area. A sad reality of being white is that we often don’t see such violence towards people of colour, as white supremacy tends to encourage segregation that makes it difficult to casually observe aggressions. And frankly, we don’t actually benefit from white supremacy, as it slowly erodes our individual heritages. For those of us proud of our Irish or German roots, this is anathema.
With such violence on the rise over the last twenty years, first with anti-Arab rhetoric after September 11th, and later with the United States’ unfortunate presidency, I think it’s important to consider World War Two and its veterans, and why its important to honour and listen to them.
In many ways, we’re still aching from the wounds opened in Flanders a century ago, and if we lose that significance that we’ve upheld for years, we risk allowing that violence back into our lives, leading to more wounded warriors and lost friends and families.
So, at least, this millennial journalist tries to remember.
