My daughter's first drawing...

My 16-month old daughter’s first drawing, done on an iPad (and printed via AirPrint for fridge display).

A night at é by José Andrés in Vegas

A Pittance of Time

This is an excellent song & music video very worth seeing today on Remembrance Day about the importance of taking a moment of time to remember the sacrifices made both in previous wars and even today.

Take two minutes, would you mind?
It’s a pittance of time
For the boys and the girls who went over
In peace may they rest, may we never forget why they died.
It’s a pittance of time

On November 11, 1999 Terry Kelly was in a drug store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. At 10:55 AM an announcement came over the store’s PA asking customers who would still be on the premises at 11:00 AM to give two minutes of silence in respect to the veterans who have sacrificed so much for us.

Terry was impressed with the store’s leadership role in adopting the Legion’s “two minutes of silence” initiative. He felt that the store’s contribution of educating the public to the importance of remembering was commendable.

When eleven o’clock arrived on that day, an announcement was again made asking for the “two minutes of silence” to commence. All customers, with the exception of a man who was accompanied by his young child, showed their respect.

Terry’s anger towards the father for trying to engage the store’s clerk in conversation and for setting a bad example for his child was channeled into a beautiful piece of work called, “A Pittance of Time”. Terry later recorded “A Pittance of Time” and included it on his full-length music CD, “The Power of the Dream”.

Source: Terry Kelly — A Pittance of Time

Eternal Vigilance

This is an article I wrote six years ago for CADENCE magazine, a publication for the Canadian Cadet Instructors Cadre, on the importance of observing Remembrance Day.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance

— Thomas Jefferson

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

— George Santayana

If there is a fundamental responsibility for us as members of a military organization and citizens of a free country, it is to ensure that we never allow ourselves to forget the great sacrifices of the past.

On June 6, 1944, hundreds of Canadian soldiers participated in the Allied invasion at Normandy Beach. This invasion was conducted against heavily fortified German positions and against incredible odds. This was the turning point in a war that had ravaged most of Europe and was the first significant victory against the German war machine.

But this victory came with a price: most of these soldiers did not come back. The sacrifices of these solders have become almost legendary, but we must never lose sight of the fact that these soldiers were not superheroes. Rather, they were normal everyday men, who believed in the cause of freedom for which they were fighting and committed themselves to drawing a line against the darkness that had plagued most of Europe. Most of these soldiers were boys- younger than our senior cadets.

In the intervening 60 years, it seems that we as a society have collectively forgotten or downplayed these contributions as being of little significance. Today we have the luxury of living in a free society that seems untouched by the tyranny of the past and have fallen into a comfortable routine of assuming that it can never happen again. In such a mindset, we find ourselves forgetting that we enjoy these comforts because of the sacrifices made by thousands of men and women during not one, but two world wars.

Further, the ideological complications of the many conflicts on the international scene have produced a generation of individuals who would have us believe that by remembering these sacrifices we are only glorifying war. The result is that many in society continue to lose their memory in a wash of misguided social consciousness.

In 1990, I was selected to participate in an international air cadet exchange to the Netherlands. One single defining memory of that experience is the total strangers who, upon realizing that I was Canadian, came up to me and thanked me for the sacrifices of my nation and my ancestors. It was a sobering experience to realize that these were people who had lived through a fascist occupation and who genuinely saw our Canadian soldiers as the liberators of their country. One elderly Dutch man said to me in halting English, “We owe your people a debt that can never be repaid.”

The Netherlands is a place that remembers-that does not allow its sons and daughters to forget the great sacrifices that ensured its people could enjoy freedom. It understands the price that was paid-and the reason that price had to be paid- because its people lived through it.

We are the inheritors of this legacy and should do ourselves and our forefathers proud by ensuring that we remember their sacrifices with the same pride.

Each Nov. 11, we take time to remember those who gave every- thing to preserve our freedom. As Cadet Program leaders, we have an opportunity to ensure that our cadets not only remember, but also help others understand the sacrifices made and why they were necessary. I believe it is this duty to which John McCrae speaks in this line from his famous poem “In Flanders Fields”- “To you from failing hands we throw, the torch; be yours to hold it high….”

To remember these sacrifices is not to glorify war, but to celebrate peace by ensuring that we prize freedom and remain always ready to draw the line against oppression.

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