REMEMBRANCE DAY CELEBRATION

It is Remembrance Day with a time of silence at eleven o’clock a.m. to remember those who served in the armed forces to keep our country free. The red poppies displayed on our chest or hat and the living poppies in Flanders Field in France, and other lands facing bondage, tell the stories and wave or salute their thanks to those who died to retain freedom or others who were maimed.

Thank you very much! This includes all those whom we have elected for Ottawa’s powerhouse and those needed to carry out our laws. It is nice to hear from those who express their thanks in words. Words can soon be forgotten in the following days. But we have another gift to give to those seeking to restore whatever measure of health that might be possible for the recovering ones. This gift is to send thoughts of appreciation whenever possible. Although thoughts are not visible to the naked eye or audibly heard, they can still be very powerful. Our son had been transferred from his Canadian employment to the U.S. The parents with their small son settled nicely into their new home and registered him in grade school. On Remembrance Day students are given the opportunity to join other classmates for a visit with soldiers recovering from war injuries. The children were told they could speak to one of them if they wished so they could better understand the reality and consequences of wars. My daughter-in-law tells me that one of their son’s classmates laughed at the strange metal bandages worn by one of the injured men. Fearing that the soldier might feel offended, he reproved his fellow classmate. At the dinner table that evening he asked his parents if he had done the right thing. “If you said it kindly and in a gentle voice, you need not worry that you won’t fit in with your new classmates,” was their answer. Later, they returned to Canada, where their son was selected as one of the Valedictorians of the Graduating Class from high school and voted President of the Student Council by classmates at Okanagan Regional College.