Take up our quarrel with the foe...

Really don't like Remembrance Day assemblies much. Hard to really explain why--the whole day is a rather awkward one--it puts me in an odd mood.

As a kid, we would sometimes go down to the cenotaph--the war memorial--for the annual Remembrance Day ceremony--I think my grandfather would be there--he fought in the first world war and was in the Legion, i recall. The main thing about the day was remembering, and in our family it was partly about my dad's brother, who I was named after. He was maybe year and a half older than my dad--he was the golden child, good looking, popular.

He was a runner--he ran the mile in under 4:10 when the world record was still over 4 minutes--and the army put him on their track team. He could've stayed at home--competing--but when his friends shipped overseas, he chose to go with them. He survived until near the end of the war--there were only a few weeks left in it when he was killed in Germany. He didn't have to be there; he had been wounded on an old knee injury and had been in hospital, but essentially checked himself out to rejoin his friends in the fighting. They didn't bury allied soldiers in Germany, so his grave is in Holland.

My dad, lying about his age, had also tried to enlist, but because of rheumatic fever was turned down. A few months after losing his only sibling, my dad's fiancée was holidaying in Wales when she was killed in a car accident. What began shortly afterwards was a journey--he left his home in Manitoba, stopping to work at various spots for a few months at a time--I think the longest he stayed in one place was maybe a year and a half. This migration steadily westward took a decade, and finally he ended up on the coast, where he settled and eventually married my mom in his mid-30s.

My mom had grown up in England--her war memories were of her brothers in the battles, and she and her family being evacuated when the Germans bombed them, coming out to see the devastation by day. Her older sister met and married a Canadian, and eventually she and two of her brothers also immigrated to Canada--where she met my dad--so, in a sense, the war also brought them together, only years later.

For my first few years teaching drama, the Remembrance Day assemblies automatically fell to me--and I created a variety of presentations; tasteful and generally short. It was only at my current school that I grew tired of the obligation--I didn't really like having to balance between those who wanted only a memorial service to honour a noble sacrifice, and those who'd have us preach the stupidity of all war and the futility of any war deaths. Plus, the very best that kids were to get as feedback from their audience was total silence.

I gave it up a few years ago, and I haven't regretted it. I'll be playing the piano for a soloist at tomorrow's assembly, and that's plenty for me. I still don't know how to feel about it all...

J.