PollyPrissyPants

Canadians gather for Remembrance Day
John Ward, CP

The Peace Tower bell tolled 11 times over a silent crowd of thousands clustered around the National War Memorial as the country marked Remembrance Day and the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War.

That conflict ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.

A piper played a lament as artillery pieces fired a slow, measured salute 21 times.

A flight of four CF-18 jets boomed over Parliament Hill, with one plane pulling up and away from the others to leave what is known as the missing man formation.

The sidewalks and roadways surrounding the memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier were jammed with old and young alike, all gathered quiet and solemn as the rituals played out.

Lines of chairs held dozens of frail veterans, many of them bundled in blankets against a damp wind. Behind them, military guard units, troops of cadets and blocks of younger veterans stood at attention.

Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean and Prime Minister Stephen Harper presided over the traditional ceremony along with Avril Dianna Stachnik of Waskatenau, Alta., the Silver Cross mother representing generations of grieved parents.

Her son, Sgt. Shane Hank Stachnik, was killed in Afghanistan in September 2006.

John Babcock, at 108 the only surviving Canadian who was in uniform during the 1914-18 war, made a brief appearance by video, symbolically passing a torch of remembrance.

It marked Lt.-Col. John McCrae’s famous line from In Flanders Fields: “To you, from failing hands, we throw the torch, be yours to hold it high.”

The flame was handed to a veteran of the Second World War, who passed it to a Korean War vet. It was then given to a retired peacekeeper in a light blue uniform, and on to a soldier wearing the chocolate chip fatigues of the Afghan war.

The ceremony opened with O Canada under cold, grey skies, followed by the haunting bugle notes of the Last Post.

It was one of many commemorations across the country.

In Halifax, Charlotte Lynn Smith, mother of another soldier killed in Afghanistan, laid a wreath at the Grand Parade cenotaph before hundreds of onlookers.

Pte. Nathan Smith of Ostrea Lake, N.S., was one of four Canadian soldiers killed when an American jet mistakenly dropped a bomb on them in April 2002.

Services began in Newfoundland shortly after dawn when veterans in St. John’s laid a wreath at a new war memorial.

Premier Danny Williams later unveiled a plaque in St. John’s to honour Canadians serving in Afghanistan.

A ceremony in Toronto began with the release of white doves and the playing of the Last Post in the veteran’s section of Prospect Cemetery.

Another early ceremony saw teenage air cadets in Oshawa maintain an honour guard through the night at the city’s cenotaph.

Earlier in Afghanistan, the families of six Canadian soldiers gathered at the cenotaph inside the Canadian compound at Kandahar Air Field. The families laid wreaths emblazoned with the words “Fallen Soldier.”

More than 100,000 Canadians have lost their lives in a century of wars, including almost 69,000 in the First World War, 47,000 in the Second World War, 517 in the Korean War, 112 in peacekeeping missions and 97 in Afghanistan.