Remembrance
Nov. 10th, 2005 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dewlineI'm going to attend the service at the War Memorial downtown tomorrow morning. It's something that I do every year barring sudden changes of fortunes, good and ill alike. I've seen a lot of the changes in the ceremonies over the last decade or so since moving to Ottawa and starting this particular ritual of pilgrimage. I expect that, should I live so long, I'll see a great many additional changes in the rituals of Remembrance, in its participants, and in myself.
One thing I've tried to not change is this: I try to dress for the weather at its worst. More than that, I tend to expect the weather to cooperate accordingly, allowing for the health of the veterans in attendance. In fact, I'd consider it disrespectful to the occasion if the temperature rose much above 5° C or if the sky were excessively bright. I often don't wear my Sunday best to these observances either.
If this seems odd or rude of me, here's an attempt at explanation:
The first of the veterans honoured by what we now call Remembrance Day in Canada fought in the mud and cold and wind and rain turning to snow. Fought and died in that mess of weather on the various battlefields of Europe. That was what it was like for the first of them, the ones who lived to see the first observances of the Day in 1918.
So it only seems fair and just to me on some level that those of us who observe the ceremonies now, at least in Ottawa, to feel something of that sense of time and place. Of the pains the soldiers endured in it. Feel it firsthand, as best we can.
So I bundle up every year on that morning, go down to the War Memorial, and huddle in my coat and whatnot, and hope for the weather to be as close to what it was Over There Back Then. Even though it'll render my wardrobe somewhat less than useful for the purpose.
And if I feel some of that cold and damp...so much the better.
It is, after all, the right time and place for such feelings.
One thing I've tried to not change is this: I try to dress for the weather at its worst. More than that, I tend to expect the weather to cooperate accordingly, allowing for the health of the veterans in attendance. In fact, I'd consider it disrespectful to the occasion if the temperature rose much above 5° C or if the sky were excessively bright. I often don't wear my Sunday best to these observances either.
If this seems odd or rude of me, here's an attempt at explanation:
The first of the veterans honoured by what we now call Remembrance Day in Canada fought in the mud and cold and wind and rain turning to snow. Fought and died in that mess of weather on the various battlefields of Europe. That was what it was like for the first of them, the ones who lived to see the first observances of the Day in 1918.
So it only seems fair and just to me on some level that those of us who observe the ceremonies now, at least in Ottawa, to feel something of that sense of time and place. Of the pains the soldiers endured in it. Feel it firsthand, as best we can.
So I bundle up every year on that morning, go down to the War Memorial, and huddle in my coat and whatnot, and hope for the weather to be as close to what it was Over There Back Then. Even though it'll render my wardrobe somewhat less than useful for the purpose.
And if I feel some of that cold and damp...so much the better.
It is, after all, the right time and place for such feelings.
