Canada Peacekeeping Hero, Romeo Dallaire, Saviour of Rawanda is right on.... there are new monsters of this world.... and humanity and rules and laws and honour and lives...just don't matter - and the world is tired of the human waste of good and decent people - United Nations u betrayed humanity ...once again.... just like Rwanda
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On the home front: Yarmouth’s Junior Commandos of the Second World War recalled
Greg Bennett Published on November 11, 2015
SHELBURNE - Hands slightly trembling, she holds out the fraying pieces of cloth. Though faded, its proud letters, “J. C.” and stripes remain easily discernible.
It is almost all Vivian Williams has left of a turbulent time in her life, and is a reminder of the role Canadians – even children – played during the Second World War on the homefront.
A junior commando
It was 1942. The war had been raging for more than two years and the U.S. had just entered the battle on the side of the Allies.
She was just a little girl, but eight-year-old Vivian wanted to help.
At the time, she was living in Yarmouth with her mother. Her father was working in Labrador.
Determined to assist in the war effort, she became a junior commando -part of a squad of young people who collected metal that could be reused in the war effort.
And metal she found.
Vivian recalls people in her neighborhood in Yarmouth’s north end giving her old pots and pans they were no longer using and digging out much more discarded metal from backyard dump sites. The iron, aluminum and brass gathered was taken to a collection centre, where she and other junior commandos were told it would be turned into ships, tanks and planes to fight the war with.
And the youngster knew what was going on. The war was all around her. The high-pitched whine of air raid sirens outside her bedroom window still resonates in her memories.
“It would go off and we would have to have the blinds pulled quickly,” she recalls.
She remembers with pride wearing the special armband – complete with stripes – she was given as a junior commando. She also recalls winning a drawing contest that year and accepting her prize, a Little Orphan Annie embroidery kit at the CJLS office.
It was from Little Orphan Annie comic books that the idea of junior commandos was first introduced. In the comic, Annie organized the group with her friends. The idea caught on across the U.S, and Canada and soon there were thousands of real junior commandos collecting metal, newspapers and other recyclable items for the war effort.
A family moves home
A year later, Vivian would leave Yarmouth to return to Sable River with her mother, where the war continued to touch her life.
Her much-loved uncle, M. Gordon Giffin, left with the Canadian Army for the battlefields of Europe. The family would receive a tersely worded telegram only months later that he was seriously wounded – shot in the chest by a sniper during the battle for France. He returned to Shelburne County at the war’s end with injuries that would plague him for the rest of his life.
Vivian grew up to become a nurse, serving in hospitals as well as nursing homes in Shelburne and Lockeport. She would later also care for her uncle, who lived until he was 90.
The war, so many years ago, is usually far from her thoughts today.
But when sorting through old boxes, if a carefully stored armband – its proud letter and stripes still clear – falls out, the memories still flood back.
http://www.novanewsnow.com/News/Local/2015-11-11/article-4340051/On-the-home-front%3A%26nbsp%3B-Yarmouth%26rsquo%3Bs-Junior-Commandos-of-the-Second-World-War-recalled/1
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Greg Bennett Published on November 11, 2015
SHELBURNE - Hands slightly trembling, she holds out the fraying pieces of cloth. Though faded, its proud letters, “J. C.” and stripes remain easily discernible.
It is almost all Vivian Williams has left of a turbulent time in her life, and is a reminder of the role Canadians – even children – played during the Second World War on the homefront.
A junior commando
It was 1942. The war had been raging for more than two years and the U.S. had just entered the battle on the side of the Allies.
She was just a little girl, but eight-year-old Vivian wanted to help.
At the time, she was living in Yarmouth with her mother. Her father was working in Labrador.
Determined to assist in the war effort, she became a junior commando -part of a squad of young people who collected metal that could be reused in the war effort.
And metal she found.
Vivian recalls people in her neighborhood in Yarmouth’s north end giving her old pots and pans they were no longer using and digging out much more discarded metal from backyard dump sites. The iron, aluminum and brass gathered was taken to a collection centre, where she and other junior commandos were told it would be turned into ships, tanks and planes to fight the war with.
And the youngster knew what was going on. The war was all around her. The high-pitched whine of air raid sirens outside her bedroom window still resonates in her memories.
“It would go off and we would have to have the blinds pulled quickly,” she recalls.
She remembers with pride wearing the special armband – complete with stripes – she was given as a junior commando. She also recalls winning a drawing contest that year and accepting her prize, a Little Orphan Annie embroidery kit at the CJLS office.
It was from Little Orphan Annie comic books that the idea of junior commandos was first introduced. In the comic, Annie organized the group with her friends. The idea caught on across the U.S, and Canada and soon there were thousands of real junior commandos collecting metal, newspapers and other recyclable items for the war effort.
A family moves home
A year later, Vivian would leave Yarmouth to return to Sable River with her mother, where the war continued to touch her life.
Her much-loved uncle, M. Gordon Giffin, left with the Canadian Army for the battlefields of Europe. The family would receive a tersely worded telegram only months later that he was seriously wounded – shot in the chest by a sniper during the battle for France. He returned to Shelburne County at the war’s end with injuries that would plague him for the rest of his life.
Vivian grew up to become a nurse, serving in hospitals as well as nursing homes in Shelburne and Lockeport. She would later also care for her uncle, who lived until he was 90.
The war, so many years ago, is usually far from her thoughts today.
But when sorting through old boxes, if a carefully stored armband – its proud letter and stripes still clear – falls out, the memories still flood back.
http://www.novanewsnow.com/News/Local/2015-11-11/article-4340051/On-the-home-front%3A%26nbsp%3B-Yarmouth%26rsquo%3Bs-Junior-Commandos-of-the-Second-World-War-recalled/1
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A young woman publicizes the work of Red Cross volunteers in this photo, taken from Halifax In Wartime, 1939-1945: An East Coast Collection
Don’t forget women’s role in the war effort
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91% think Canadians should do more to honour veterans: poll
PAOLA LORIGGIO The Canadian Press | Published November 9, 2015 - 8:49am | Updated November 09, 2015 - 8:56AM
PHOTO:
An army cadet stands in position at the cenotaph during a Vimy Day ceremony in Truro in 2013. (MICHAEL GORMAN / File)
TORONTO — Canadians overwhelmingly find Remembrance Day as relevant today as when it began nearly a century ago, but are split on whether younger generations properly appreciate and honour the country’s veterans, according to a new survey released days before the ceremony.
The poll commissioned by Historica Canada found that 82 per cent of Canadians believe the annual tribute is as important now as it was shortly after the First World War.
Only slightly more than half (54 per cent), however, feel today’s youth “do a good job” of honouring veterans, and slightly fewer than half (46 per cent) think young people understand the sacrifices of those who have died in conflict.
Even those under 35 are torn, with only 54 per cent saying young people recognize veterans’ sacrifices — in itself a sign of engagement, Historica Canada’s president said.
“When the answer among youth themselves is split as to whether they sufficiently care or not, if you’re saying ‘Yeah, I don’t actually know if I care as much as I should,’ in effect you’re really saying, ‘I do care because I’ve taken the trouble to think about that,“’ Anthony Wilson-Smith said.
Overall, the importance Canadians attribute to the Nov. 11 commemoration has risen slightly in the decade that Historica Canada has been polling on the topic, Wilson-Smith said.
“The further that we get from (the Second World War)…the more reason there would seem to be for interest to lessen, but actually I think there’s a tremendous awareness among all Canadians that our veterans from that war in particular are now generally in their 90s, it’s an open question as to how much longer we will have them and their memories and the ability to celebrate them while they’re here.”
Wearing a poppy remains the most popular way for Canadians to mark the event, with 79 per cent of respondents saying they will don one of the traditional pins.
More than 77 per cent say they will observe two minutes of silence at 11 a.m. on Remembrance Day, and 32 per cent say they will attend a service.
But many say they would support other ways to pay tribute to those who have fought for their country. Eighty per cent say Canada should build a memorial similar to the Vietnam War monument in Washington, D.C., which would bear the names of all Canadian military personnel who died in combat during modern times.
And the vast majority (91 per cent) believe Canada should do more to honour its veterans.
Support for making Remembrance Day a national holiday has remained steady since 2012 at 85 per cent. While it is currently a federal statutory holiday, only six provinces deem it a day off.
But some believe the switch would turn Remembrance Day into another holiday spent shopping or socializing and detract from the date’s significance.
One thousand Canadians were interviewed online by Ipsos Reid between Oct. 22 and 26. The sample’s composition was weighted to reflect the country’s adult population according to Census data.
The poll is accurate to within plus or minus 3.5 percentage points 19 times out of 20 had all Canadian adults been surveyed.
http://m.thechronicleherald.ca/canada/1321457-91-think-canadians-should-do-more-to-honour-veterans-poll
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Leonard Cohen recites “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae | Legion Magazine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKoJvHcMLfc
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QUOTE: This book is dedicated to the men and women who stood in harm's way, to those who came home with the damage that shows and also the damage that no one sees and no one else can know- Bone by Bone- Carol O'Connell
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PTSD- A SOLDIER'S SIREN SONG: 'makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop...
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(My Hero)- Those Who Serve
LT.-GEN. (RET'D) ROMEO DALLAIRE
A copy of In Flanders Fields, in John McCrae's own hand, hung above my desk in the Senate. When I first read it, as a boy in the 1950s - decades after it had been written - war had been a part of everyday life for generations. After two world wars, concepts like patriotism and unity against a common enemy felt absolute, and McCrae's poem was like a torch being passed to every child, woman and man, evoking a communal understanding of the importance of sacrifice.
Today, we no longer enjoy this unity of understanding. Our country is at a restless peace, while the world is rife with conflicts that are complex, messy, unpredictable and borderless. Belligerents are playing by a new set of rules, and we still haven't seen the playbook. Yet In Flanders Fields is far from being irrelevant in this new world disorder. Its timeless meaning endures, though McCrae's words speak more personally now.
The power of this poem, which has survived the hundred years of war and peace since it was written, now lies in its many resonances-perhaps as many as it has readers.
Excerpt and image from In Flanders Fields: 100 Years, republished with permission by Knopf Canada.
--------------
'You feel the pain': Canadians killed in Afghanistan honoured in Halifax Remembrance Day ceremony
Two weeks after Afghanistan was added to the cenotaph, Jim Davis laid a wreath for his son Cpl. Paul James Davis
Jim Davis, right, this year's Memorial Cross recipient, lays a wreath at the cenotaph in Halifax Grand Parade Wednesday for his Cpl. Paul Davis who was killed in Afghanistan in 2006.
Jim Davis stepped back after laying a wreath
at the cenotaph, placing a hand on the poppy over his heart as clapping
filled the air.
Davis, a Memorial Cross recipient, laid one of
the first wreaths at the cenotaph in Halifax’s Grand Parade on
Remembrance Day in honour of his son Cpl. Paul James Davis of
Bridgewater, who was killed in action while in Afghanistan in 2006.
Jay Tofflemire, ceremony emcee, shared an
emotional quote from Davis with the crowd about the last moments Davis
had with his son before he flew overseas.
“I’ll never forget his smile when we said
goodbye to each other. … I don’t know who broke the stare first, me or
him,” Tofflemire read.
“I turned my head away and got in my cab and put my head in my hands and I cried.”
Jeff Harper/Metro
Crowds gathered at Halifax Grand Parade
including Sgt. Lance Wade, centre, to watch Remembrance Day ceremonies
in Halifax on Wednesday.
A crowd of hundreds gathered in Grand Parade
to see all branches of the armed forces march into the square, heard
prayers for the fallen and those still in uniform, and watched a chorus
of Grade 4 children from Halifax Grammar School read In Flanders Fields.
After the ceremony, Tofflemire, second vice
president of the Nova Scotia Nunavut Command of the Royal Canadian
Legion, said he had met earlier with Davis and the parents of others
killed in Afghanistan, including Cpl. Christopher Reid of Truro.
Tofflemire said although he hadn’t met David or Reid, as serving military Canadians they are “still my family.”
“When that happens you feel the pain. Deep pain,” Tofflemire said, his voice breaking.
Jeff Harper/Metro
Members of the Colour Guard salute during Remembrance Day ceremonies at Grand Parade on Wednesday.
The years marking Canada’s role in Afghanistan were added to the cenotaph just two weeks ago, Tofflemire said.
Michelle Khan of Dartmouth had a father and grandfather both serve, and said she always thinks about them on Nov.11.
“It’s just a good moment to remember all the people that went before us. All the things we have to be lucky about,” Khan said.
Jeff Harper/Metro
Trevor Tracey, left, and Bill Mont release doves as part of Remembrance Day Ceremonies in Halifax on Wednesday.
http://www.metronews.ca/news/halifax/2015/11/11/remembrance-day-ceremony-in-halifax.html
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The Black Battalion- Canada
Juanita Pleasant Wilbur of Kentville, Nova Scotia, Canada
They came two hundred to answer the call
But only to fall
Their way was not paved
For a country they wanted to save
The battle cry went out
But these men were ousted
Their colour was wrong
Their courage strong
From battle line to battle line they went
But no one wanted them
A checker-board army they were called
Their courage strong they still persisted
For the right to fight for a country they loved
For the right to live as all men
Free and strong
The march was on, their will was strong
From place to place they went
Rejected by all, their cry was heard
Let us do our best
Don't let us be less
Give us a chance to build a life for our children
Let us make our mark
Give us a chance to stand proud and free
Rejected and tired of waiting
They finally saw the light
You're on a flight
Over-seas you're bound
At last you found your place
A checker-board army has been born
A remembrance to my Grand-dad, Private Wallace James Pleasant and all the black men who fought and became know as Canada's best kept secret.
We love you all so much.... to my Fannie (Clement) Brothers and to my Debbie Pleasant-Joseph ..... love you all so much....
VICTORIA CROSS- CAMADOAM William Hall, V.C.: The Naval Veteran (2:44 min.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_va_OP2ba4
William Hall, V.C. was born in Summerville and was the first member of the Navy from British North America to receive the Victoria Cross, the most prestigious of military medals. William received the medal for a heroic rescue that he participated in during the Indian Uprising of 1758. The rescue mission captured the imagination of the Victorian public: the mission was known to every school boy in the Empire. While initially buried without military honours in an unmarked grave, William was later buried beneath a stone cairn on the lawn of the Baptist Church in Hantsport, Hants Co..
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RTroops-regardless of politics.. u serve all Canada- all
Canadians... and on this day... we are free because of you.
The
Canadian Military
-----------------
We Are Canadian Soldiers
Supporting Our Canadian Troops !!!
Lyrics:
It's time to strap out boots on,
This is a perfect day to die,
Wipe the blood out of our eyes.
In this life there's no surrender,
There's nothing left for us to do,
Find the strength to see this through.
We are the ones who will never be broken
With our final breath, we'll fight to the death
We Are Soldiers! We Are Soldiers!
Whoa, Who-oh-oh-oa, Who-oh-ohhhhhhh-oh-oa
WE ARE SOLDIERS!
I stand here right beside you,
Tonight we're fighting for ours lives,
Let me hear your battlecry. Your Battlecry!
We are the ones who will never be broken
With our final breath, we'll fight to the death
We Are Soldiers! We Are Soldiers!
We are the ones who will not go unspoken(unspoken)
No we will not sleep, we are not sheep
We Are Soldiers! We Are Soldiers! Yeah!
We stand shoulder to shoulder
We stand shoulder to shoulder
We stand shoulder to shoulder
You can't erase us, you'll just have to face us!
We stand shoulder to shoulder!
We stand shoulder to shoulder!
We stand shoulder to shoulder!
You can't erase us, you'll just have to face us!
We are the ones who will never be broken
With our final breath, we'll fight to the death
We Are Soldiers! We Are Soldiers!
We are the ones who will not go unspoken(unspoken)
No we will not sleep, we are not sheep
We Are Soldiers! We Are Soldiers! Yeah!
Whoa! Who-oh-oh-oa! Who-oh-ohhhhhhh-oh-oa!
We Are Soldiers!
Whoa! Who-oh-oh-oa! Who-oh-ohhhhhhh-oh-oa!
We Are Soldiers!
Whoa! Who-oh-oh-oa! Who-oh-ohhhhhhh-oh-oa!
We Are Soldiers!
Lyrics:
It's time to strap out boots on,
This is a perfect day to die,
Wipe the blood out of our eyes.
In this life there's no surrender,
There's nothing left for us to do,
Find the strength to see this through.
We are the ones who will never be broken
With our final breath, we'll fight to the death
We Are Soldiers! We Are Soldiers!
Whoa, Who-oh-oh-oa, Who-oh-ohhhhhhh-oh-oa
WE ARE SOLDIERS!
I stand here right beside you,
Tonight we're fighting for ours lives,
Let me hear your battlecry. Your Battlecry!
We are the ones who will never be broken
With our final breath, we'll fight to the death
We Are Soldiers! We Are Soldiers!
We are the ones who will not go unspoken(unspoken)
No we will not sleep, we are not sheep
We Are Soldiers! We Are Soldiers! Yeah!
We stand shoulder to shoulder
We stand shoulder to shoulder
We stand shoulder to shoulder
You can't erase us, you'll just have to face us!
We stand shoulder to shoulder!
We stand shoulder to shoulder!
We stand shoulder to shoulder!
You can't erase us, you'll just have to face us!
We are the ones who will never be broken
With our final breath, we'll fight to the death
We Are Soldiers! We Are Soldiers!
We are the ones who will not go unspoken(unspoken)
No we will not sleep, we are not sheep
We Are Soldiers! We Are Soldiers! Yeah!
Whoa! Who-oh-oh-oa! Who-oh-ohhhhhhh-oh-oa!
We Are Soldiers!
Whoa! Who-oh-oh-oa! Who-oh-ohhhhhhh-oh-oa!
We Are Soldiers!
Whoa! Who-oh-oh-oa! Who-oh-ohhhhhhh-oh-oa!
We Are Soldiers!
-------
Hidden history of the poppy: How a #WWI
poem blossomed into an annual #RemembranceDay.
http://ow.ly/UcVrv
The hidden history of the poppy
How a World War One poem about poppies blossomed into an annual Remembrance Day campaign raising $14 million each year to assist veterans.
Lt.-Col. John McCrae and his dog Bonneau.
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