On the main road heading into Fredericton where I live, there is a car dealership with a Canadian flag the size of a house. Whenever we lose a serviceman or woman it flies at half mast. It flies at half mast more often than it should, and it's a sight that always saddens me. I'm usually silent the rest of the way into town, thinking not only the individual families who will mourn the loss of a son or daughter- often the same age as my own children - but of the greater loss to us as a nation. I am silent when I think of what they have given to us as a nation.Just a quick perusal of BBC online or English Aljazeera, two news sources that I go to on a fairly regular basis, one can see how privileged we are as Canadians. We have so many freedoms to be grateful for. We have a democracy that works.
There is a YouTube video that has, I am sure, gone viral by now, and maybe you have seen it - in it a street interviewer, microphone in hand, is asking groups of young people questions like, 'Do you know what the Halocaust is?' and when they shrug and say they don't know, he presses on. 'How about Adolf Hitler, you know who he is?' More shrugs. More comments like, 'The name sounds familiar, but I don't watch the news.'
Now, I don't know how accurate a portrayal this is of our Canadian youth, but even if only a few don't know the answers, we, as writers have a job to do, a sacred calling, if you will, to make sure generations to come never forget.
So, I will end , inadequate as this is posting is on this awesome day, and say thank you.
Lest we forget.
3 comments:
Linda, thank your for this timely focus. It is saddening -- and perhaps a little maddening -- to find the level of ignorance amongst segments of the younger generation of the significant names and points of history as recent as WWII.
Hmm, yes, we do have a job to do.
Thank-you for reminding me to ask my kids...sometimes its easy to assume they know, just because it seems they would.
I read your post on Remembrance Day and want to add a point.
Though I know those names or about those events, from history lessons or senior members of family or friends, people even in our generation do not truly know the horrors of war.
We need to remember.
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