Mr. Speaker, I thank all my colleagues.
It is a great honour for me to say a few words in tribute to our veterans.
As other hon. colleagues have said, this year Remembrance Day will not be as others have been. Our most vulnerable citizens are those we honour the most.
In my own community, if we did not have COVID, I would be standing by the cenotaph in Sidney with extraordinary Canadians, like retired Commander Peter Chance, who will turn 100, I think in a couple of days or weeks. We were planning a big celebration. Peter Chance is a war hero of our Canadian navy. He served with distinction throughout the Battle of the Atlantic, and still has a devilish twinkle in his eye and a zest for life, as he tells us the stories of the enormous bravery and courage of those with whom he served.
Another friend in Sidney, Charles “Chic” Goodman, was one of those who liberated prisoner of war camps in the Netherlands. He also served at the Normandy invasion and came home to live a full life.
More recently, we must not forget those veterans of other places of conflict, throughout the Second World War of course, but also in Korea and Afghanistan. I think, particularly today, of the extraordinary courage of Lieutenant Trevor Greene. I think all colleagues will remember the attack on a young Canadian soldier in Kandahar. He had taken his helmet off to show respect toward village leaders and was attacked from behind by a young man with an axe. Extraordinarily and miraculously Trevor Greene survived. He works every day in physiotherapy to walk again. He has turned his considerable genuis and talents to becoming an activist, fighting for real action on the climate crisis.
Veterans come in all shapes and sizes and we all owe them our thanks every single day. Remembrance Day gives us the opportunity to to honour our veterans and to not forget their sacrifice and why they sacrificed. The hon. Leader of the Opposition reminded us so beautifully of the Book of Remembrance and of our Peace Tower, which is fully called, he is quite right, the Tower of Victory and Peace.
There were thoughts back in the day, when that tower was being completed, that it would be called the “War Tower”. It is significant that Canadians at that time thought, no, that this tower so symbolized our parliamentary democracy, in the centre of our Parliament, Centre Block, the Peace Tower, with its extraordinary carillon bells that still ring out. They rang out 75 times on the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That tower was determined to be called the Peace Tower.
The veterans I have mentioned by name this morning have all called for peace. We all must dedicate ourselves in the memory of all we lost and the memory that so many of us have. My dad and uncle who survived. A whole generation served and so many people were lost: first, in the First World War; then the Second World War; and on and on. We commit ourselves to war no more.
“At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”