Mr. Speaker, each year on Remembrance Day we pause to remember the sacrifices made by Canadian men and women in uniform. The service and sacrifices of Canadian Armed Forces members during the time of war, conflict and peace have defined and shaped our country.
Throughout our history, Canadian men and women have bravely fought tyranny and evil around the world, defending our country, our values and our way of life.
This year's ceremony takes on a very special meaning. Canadians will not only be marking Remembrance Day but the 100th anniversary of the armistice on November 11, 1918.
The Canada and Newfoundland of November 1918 was a much different place from the land we live in today. Streetcars and automobiles still shared the road with horse-drawn carriages. Canadians and Newfoundlanders fought for King and countries. To this day, July 1 holds additional meaning for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador.
It would be another year before we could begin gathering around radios for news and entertainment. Most would first learn of the armistice from their daily newspaper or ecstatic neighbours who had already read the news. Together, they would flood into the streets. “PEACE” read the bold banner headline of the Toronto Star, but beneath that headline and deep inside the pages would come news foreshadowing great misery to come.
The Globe and Mail would report that the terms of surrender were a humiliation to Germany, but on that day and in that moment there was no room for fear or worry. Peace had been achieved. Canadians would soon see themselves projected onto screens by grainy newsreels that recorded the happiness that drove them and millions more across the world into the streets, where they rejoiced in the war's end.
Perhaps it was the images and memories of that day that would encourage Canadians to join each other a year later to mark the very first Remembrance Day.
Perhaps it was that the Great War, the war to end all wars, had scarred our nations so deeply and cost us so immensely.
Perhaps it was that the war spared no one and had exacted such a heavy and personal toll from everyone that people all across the Commonwealth would see fit to begin marking its end together.
We know for certain what Kenneth Lawrence, a World War I veteran from my riding of Brantford—Brant, was thinking. He was the last Canadian to be wounded in World War I and was quoted at the time as saying that there were thousands who were physically wounded like him, and thousands more not physically but mentally and morally wounded. It would take our nation generations to come to terms with those mental wounds that Kenneth Lawrence spoke of.
Those dispatches, buried under the headlines heralding peace, foretold of future war, a war that would trace its roots back to the fragile peace of November 1918.
Indeed, Canadians would be called upon time and time again to leave the comfort of their lives, don their country's uniform, deploy to foreign lands and once again display a willingness to sacrifice all to achieve another peace, from World War II to the Korean War, to Afghanistan, to the fight against ISIS and everything in between.
The men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces have not wavered in their resolve to defend our country, our values and our way of life, so let us take time today to not only pay tribute to those who have sacrificed all, but to thank those who stand ready today to do the same.
This Remembrance Day, I urge all members to join me in extending a heartfelt thank you to Canadian veterans and those serving today. Let us not forget that on that first Remembrance Day there was great sorrow, but along with it great joy in the peace that had been achieved.
I would like to read a poem. It is not the poem members might think I would read today. This is a poem, a stanza of which all of us as members of Parliament who attend various Remembrance Day ceremonies in our communities and around the globe will say as an act of remembrance.
This poem, For the Fallen, was written by Laurence Binyon during the war. He had been on the front lines and witnessed what was happening in the Great War. He writes:
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Lest we forget.