It's funny; the real experience has nothing to do with where I work or my role as a co-chair of the Veterans Affairs commemoration group.
For 32 years I was a reserve army musician. When you are a reserve army musician, you end up playing at a lot of commemorative events and a lot of November 11 ceremonies. I was in Halton with the Lorne Scots, in Toronto and finally in Ottawa with the Governor General's Foot Guards.
I was shocked in June 1994, on the anniversary of D-Day. There was a large event planned for Ottawa. We knew that CBC and CTV were going to broadcast live from Normandy. Whether or not I was just cynical, I'm not sure, but I figured that when the band marched out of Cartier Square Drill Hall and turned down Elgin Street, there would be kind of a dutiful crowd.
That's not what we found. When we marched out and got onto Elgin Street, the crowd was 10 people deep, and enthusiastic. We turned left onto Wellington Street, and the crowd was 10 people deep, and enthusiastic. We were all kind of shocked, because none of us in the band—heck, I'd been the director of history at that point for 20 years—anticipated that response to that anniversary of D-Day.
The next year when CBC and CTV televised the VE day celebrations in Apeldoorn, it was the same thing, and it hasn't stopped since: the attention paid to the 90th anniversary of Vimy, the attention paid to the death of the last World War I veteran and the last veteran from Vimy Ridge, and more importantly, the folks who went onto the bridges over Highway 401 following the friendly fire incident of April, 2002. That was absolutely spontaneous.
I don't know why this happened. I've spoken to Tim Cook about this, because he's interested in this same question. We don't know why. Whether or not there was a sudden surge of collective guilt for having ignored veterans for a long time, I don't know, but going forward, my sense is that the appetite to commemorate is there.
Unlike for the First World War and Second World War veterans who died before they could see this happen—I'm not trying to defend that or speak to it—the idea is that we have to commemorate now, before the veterans of the post-Korea era are dead and don't see the enthusiasm for it.