Mr. Speaker, on November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m., armistice was sounded along the hundreds of kilometres of trenches in France and Belgium separating the two enemy camps.
As they came out of the mud where they had been living for 50 months, millions of men, thousands of whom were Canadians and Quebeckers, breathed the fresh air of the fields without fearing they had drawn their last breath.
Then, in millions of homes, millions of women, including the woman that would become my mother, could watch the postman arrive without fearing he was bringing the fatal missive “Your husband, your fiancé, your son, died in combat”.
These men returning from hell were convinced this war was the last. However, much later, they were to see some of their sons descend in turn into hell between 1939 and 1945, others in Korea, all defending the same causes—freedom and democracy.
May we never forget or let our children forget that what we take so much for granted, like the air we breathe, we owe to the sacrifice of these men and women.