I Think We Have Forgotton

Remembrance Day has come and gone. For us who stood out in the rain, it was the least we could do for those who spent; days, weeks, months, years and even their lives fighting for the freedom that we enjoy. This year seemed different. I had trouble speaking. I choked on my words and found it difficult to say what I wanted to say.

The first service consisted of many children at the school. I talked about those who didn't made it home and those that did and how they are now old and leaving us quickly. And I talked about O Canada. Over the last few years I have noticed that the children who do not sing the national anthem are younger and younger. Just recently I stood in class with the grade 2-3 kids only to notice, all the girls sang but only one of the boys joined in. So, on this Remembrance Day, I asked them why not. It may not be cool to sing but all those dead military personal would relish the chance to sing it one more time. I pray they heard me and the teachers as well.

The third service brought it's own pull on my heart. No one remembered to respond to the poem with the word, "We will remember them". We must be forgetting, or we are loosing the importance of traditions like this one. As I stood, shoulder to shoulder with the air cadets, I only heard my own voice. When the Salvation Army Chaplin called us to prayer, another element of our lives seemed to evaporate into thin air. He began to recite the Lord's Prayer. Only a couple of cadets knew the words. These are not kids from other countries but our kids. In a country founded on Christian principals we have allowed discenters of Christianity take away the basis on which our country fought, grew and flourished. Three generations ago, most of these families attended church but not now. Something happened and we let it. Something happened and we are living the consequences.

Can it be to far off when the people of this country can not remember the National Anthem or the Lord's Prayer? I pray it will not happen. But then again, we never saw the mass exodus from church coming thirty years ago. Or did we not notice the five hundred people drive by the two hundred standing silently in the rain at 11 am on the eleventh?