I Will Remember

Photo Cred: Tim Armstrong

On November 11th, here in Canada and all over the world, we stop. 

We are still. 

We remember.

We remember the freedom we have today because of the sacrifices of those who came before. 

Spending a year in Dunkirk, France at the age of seventeen was an incredible learning experience in itself (my first French phrase was "Ça ira mieux demain." Google it), but one of my most vivid memories is the week my dad visited from Canada. 

We toured EVERY war monument and cemetery in northern France and Belgium, when all I really wanted to do was see Mont Saint Michel (we did that too). 

Despite my moody teenage self, I was overwhelmed by the care and reverence toward Canadians evident in each of these sacred places. I was stunned by the sheer number of graves and the painstaking lists of soldiers sacrificed that scrolled on and on. 

In 2009, Nathan and I went back to France and Belgium. We caught up with good friends and we spent time on the landing beaches of Dunkirk and at Passchendaele, near Ypres, Belgium.

In Canada, I am not surrounded by concrete reminders of horrific battles and hard-won wars, but I can choose to remember.

Lest we forget.

Ne les oubliez pas.

View from a Nazi concrete bunker of one of the Dunkirk Landing Beaches, 2009

Nathan exploring Nazi war bunkers, Dunkirk, 2009

Passchendaele Wall of Remembrance, 2009

Passchendaele Cemetery, 2009