"That Memorial Thing"

A few comments on Remembrance Day: The place where I work gave us Friday off instead of Nov 11. I suppose it proves that long weekends are more important than remembering. At any rate, I was chatting with a friend of mine on the phone last night who was completely mystified as to why I would have any day off last week. It suddenly came to him. Well sort of...."Oh, you were off for that memorial thing?"

When I was a boy the parade to the cenotaph in my small town seemed to stretch the entire length of the main street. I would proudly point out my father (an RCR veteran of the Italian campaign and Northwest Europe) Now there might be 4 or 5 WWII vets left in town. Many in the media have taken the CBC route of using imagery and words to infer that fighting for your country and what you believe in is wrong, and those who did are suckers...or better yet, victims.

There is a great piece on what Remembrance Day has become over at Trudeaupia. The torch was never tossed to my generation because the 60's generation extinguished the flame and burried the torch.