Monday is Remembrance Day here, a stat holiday here in God's country, a voluntary holiday only in the godless provinces further east. The Globe and Mail found a "thin brigade" of 13 centenarians who are WWI vets, and reprints their stories:
<<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/series/remembrance/>> The Prairie Provinces gave up martyrs to the two world wars out of proportion to our thin population. We entered WWI as part of the British Empire, for all practical intents and purposes, and ended it under Lieut.-Gen. Currie as the Canadian Corps (I joined the Church as a child while living in "Currie Barracks PMQ's" in Calgary) but entered WWII as a truly independent dominion, waiting a full week after Britain declared war in September 1939, just to make the point. We had one of the 5 beaches at D-Day [okay, fellow Canuckistanis -- which one?], and had an easier time of it than the fresh US troops to the south, or the demoralized Brits to the north, partly because of our suffering at the earlier "dry run" of Dunkirk. Most pilots in the Battle of Britain were prairie boys from Canada who had learned to fly crop dusters (I almost wrote "crust dopers") as teenagers. The poppy we all wear in our lapels at this time of year was codified as the memorial token of relief from suffering and the secular redemption of a country, by a Canadian medic in WWI in Flanders who, true to the cruel cut of the statistician's scythe, fell victim not to a shell or a bullet, but pneumonia, weeks before the end of the war (I speak of the poem, "In Flanders Fields," by Lieut.-Col. Dr. John McRae, whose name I actually found in Wellington County, Ontario, church records while doing FREP extraction work about 5 years ago. So one presumes his eternal exaltation are now opened up for him as well). McRae wrote it on a piece of scrap paper after failing to find enough remains of a pal to constitute a proper burial, and threw it away. But it was retrieved by an unknown person and sent to Punch magazine in London, who published it a year after his death. http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/McCrae.html -- Marc A. Schindler Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada -- Gateway to the Boreal Parkland “Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on” – Winston Churchill Note: This communication represents the informal personal views of the author solely; its contents do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer, nor those of any organization with which the author may be associated. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /// ZION LIST CHARTER: Please read it at /// /// http://www.zionsbest.com/charter.html /// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ==^^=============================================================== This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?aaP9AU.bWix1n.YXJjaGl2 Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^^===============================================================
