November 11, 2024

TODAY WE SET ASIDE DIFFERENCES FOR AN HOUR — IF ONLY WE COULD DO THAT TOMORROW AND BEYOND…

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com OPINION

GRAVENHURST — The two minute silence of Last Post to remember the fallen this morning at 11 a.m. was broken at brief times by short cracks of the Canadian, provincial and Union Jack flags fluttering over the most solemn portion of the Remembrance Day ceremony.

As a couple hundred people surrounded the cenotaph at the Royal Canadian Legion the slightest of wind was enough to bring the flags and attendees to respectful attention.

A flap that wasn’t a flap.

It wasn’t dissimilar to other unique services nationwide.

**Attention! And the flags and 200 attendees at the legion cenotaph did just that for at least two minutes. Photos Mark Clairmont, MuskokaTODAY.com**

But what made this one particularly memorable was that it was convened as if in a slight foxhole — a community embracing its own.

Medals, wreaths, pipes and poppies celebrating the worst and best of wars past.

Names of the fallen ready out that mean personally less each year to most present.

Yet as a shout out for each soldier whose name was inscribed on the public tombstone a shiver went through the crowd standing warmly in not-so-cool fall day.

Pomp and circumstance aside, underscoring the solitude was a general feeling of hope and understanding.

Not the dread of a dark funeral.

Wreaths laid in honour await one final poppy about to be placed as a final gesture of respect by a member of the public in accordance with the new tradition of leaving your red mark rather than taking it home.

After hearing a hopeful Sunday sermon by Rev. Phelan Scanlon at St. Thomas Anglican Church in Bracebridge, he was asked what he thought his American counterparts would have had to say from the pulpit yesterday. Shrugging his shoulders, he could only shake his head, bow and say he’d pray for them.

In a world where war is more the norm than the exception, days like this still remain outstanding not only for what they represent, but for what they remind anyone lucky enough to participate or witness.

It’s easy to pop on a poppy (a sight less seen now) and stand on a hillside to honour the dead.

Like a good church sermon or editorial it’s to take away from it a realization that the only way to end days like today is to come together, communicate and celebrate our differences rather than what we don’t agree on.

It’s how we settle uncommonalties that will save the planet and those civilians — not soldiers — who populate it.

At the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month, we did that this day.

If only tomorrow we were to commit to the same.

Try it. You’ll live to like it.