Mr. Speaker, earlier this month I attended Remembrance Day parades, services and dinners with the legions of Peterborough riding and with members of the Hastings-Prince Edward Regiment.
This year I met only one World War I veteran who was brought by his family to the Norwood Cenotaph ceremony. There was another at the Peterborough Cenotaph.
During World War I there were only eight million people in Canada. However an incredible 620,000 men and women served in the Canadian forces in that war. Of these, 67,000 died and 173,000 were wounded. Thus more than a third of our troops were wounded or killed. Nearly one in every ten Canadians who fought in that war did not return. Such statistics are almost unimaginable today.
Those who served and died in World War I ranged from First Nations people to immigrants who had only been in Canada for a few weeks.
There is a saying that the character of a person or a society has to be forged by fire. World War I was Canada's fire. Let us—