Juno News - November 09, 2019This is why Remembrance Day is so important
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, I talk about the importance of Remembrance day, and why it matters now more than ever. I also talk about why it's important to remember not just the past, but the lessons we can learn from it, and how we can use it to help us navigate the future.
Transcript
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As we get further and further away from the great wars that Canada served in, it
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conversely gets more important that we teach our young people why we did what
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we did, why we fought, why so many Canadians served, why so many Canadians
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died, to teach them the lessons of Vimy Ridge, to teach them the more recent
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lessons of Afghanistan and what happened there, why we did what we did and what
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Canadian soldiers actually did and contributed on the ground. And I think
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there are a number of different reasons why now it is more important than ever.
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One of them is just that this day and age we don't teach history all that much
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anymore. We know Remembrance Day is a ceremony, as an occasion, there's
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assemblies in the classrooms in different schools, but the whole teaching of history,
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teaching of great books, all that kind of stuff, it's just not so much in vogue
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anymore. A lot of great teachers out there still making time for this, making sure
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we do it, but this is receding as well and it's important we do that. Another is
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that every year there are more and more new Canadians who come to Canada, enter the
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school system, or they are adults who have never actually learned these lessons.
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This is not because they don't want to, because they're explicitly ignorant of it,
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they're just new to Canada and it's important to impart these lessons to them and to
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let them know the story of Canada and the Canadian forces. There is one other issue, one other
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lesson that I think we have to take out of all of this, and that is that we need to remember
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not just what happened and why it happened so we can have that as something historical in our minds,
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but so we can use it to help us navigate the future. Remembrance Day is not just about the past,
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it's about the past, it's about the present, and it's about the future. You know, whenever I run into
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a veteran or whenever I correspond with a veteran, whether it's on social media or via email
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correspondence, do they have some things to say about the past? Yes they do, but more often than not
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they are just wanting to talk about the future, about the issues of today, about what's happening in
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Canada right now and what we can do moving forward. I spoke recently on my radio show with retired
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General Rick Hillier, and he was talking about the importance of veterans and Remembrance Day and
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the charitable organizations that do a lot to help our current serving men and women in uniform and
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of course our veterans, but once he got General Rick Hillier started talking about the challenges
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Canada faces today, well that was a great passion of his as well. He wanted to talk about the future,
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securing our future, heading in the right direction on these big policy files. Look, we just had a federal
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election where military matters, they were not discussed. Foreign affairs, it was not discussed.
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Now I don't want to see a politicization of Remembrance Day, and I think it's good that we keep away from
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that and generally everybody, everybody steps forward and does it as a non-partisan affair. We have to keep
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it that way, but at the same time we have to use it as an occasion to think about Canada and the world,
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why we got involved in the conflicts we got involved in, the things we were standing up for,
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and how all of that relates to the world today and the world that we want to build in the future
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and make sure Canada can play a leadership role in. Remembrance Day should not at all be taken
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as a light affair. It matters now more than ever.