Lest We Forget

I had the privilege this week of visiting the War Memorial in Ottawa Canada. It's a magnificent monument to those who fought in the world wars and a reminder to us of how many men and women lost their lives so we could be free today.

While at the site I took the time to also visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the grave of a soldier who lost his life but has no headstone, no recognition because he is quite simply unknown.

While I was at the tomb a group of youth, probably around 17 years in age were also present, a couple of them in the group decided to walk on top of the tomb which is very low to the ground. I asked them not to as it was a grave and they obliged causing a couple of the girls in the group to tell the boys who had done it " I told you so".

After that incident it got me thinking about how good a job we are doing to inform our youth of what is right and what is wrong with respect to how we act, and to inform them of the atrocities of war and the amount of death that occurred in the world wars.

Today we are shocked by the 3,500 deaths at the World Trade Centre as we should be, but we forget that in World War One there were 15 million military and civilian deaths with 20 million wounded. World War Two saw over 60 million, those numbers are horrendous.


We need to remember the past, keep it fresh in our memory so that we do not let history repeat itself...