“I’ve never really appreciated the idea of focusing only on the past on Remembrance Day,” said Siobhan Rowan, a Toronto resident who took part in antiwar demonstrations earlier this year with the Catholic organization Development and Peace.
“I’ve always seen it as a day to get across a message of peace and the need for peace.”
Wearing a poppy on her lapel to show her respect for Canada’s war dead doesn’t lessen her opposition to current wars around the world, Rowan said Remembrance Day is the perfect time to bring the two sentiments together.
“I may wear a poppy but I also have an ancient button, from close to 20 years ago now, put out by the Alliance for Non-Violent Action that says ‘To remember is to end all war,”‘ Rowan said.
“I often wear that button on Remembrance Day, but I’ll wear a poppy as well.”
Another vocal antiwar Canadian, 69-year-old Shirley Douglas, said she doesn’t go out of her way to wear a poppy on Remembrance Day.
“I’m not interested in the poppy for one day,” said Douglas, the daughter of Tommy Douglas, the founder of the modern Canadian health-care system and the first leader of the federal NDP.
Douglas attended marches and rallies last winter and spring to show her support for Canada’s decision to stay out of the U.S.-led conflict in Iraq.
“I’m interested in fighting back, and the principle of a better way to rule the world – and to work together – than war.”
The ongoing Iraqi conflict is responsible for the mounting deaths of American and Iraqi soldiers, as well as Iraqi civilians, international humanitarian workers and journalists. It will likely make many people view Remembrance Day differently this year, said Jonathan Vance, a history professor at the University of Western Ontario.
And the deaths of two Canadian soldiers who were killed when their Jeep drove over an explosive device in Afghanistan last month also bring the dangers of war closer to home, he said.
Sgt. Robert Short, 42, of Fredericton and Cpl. Robbie Beerenfenger, 29, of Ottawa, both died in the mishap.
Vance said today’s peace activists, like Rowan and Douglas, are able to honour the past and work for a better future.
“In the ’70s and early ’80s, it was assumed that Remembrance Day was kind of a pro-war observation and that if you were what was known at the time as a peacenik, you had to be, by definition, anti-Remembrance Day,” Vance said.
“I think that has almost entirely disappeared because it’s recognized that the actions that Canadian troops are involved in now overseas are intended toward creating and preserving peace.”
While Canada hasn’t been active in Iraq, six Canadians have been killed in Afghanistan over the past 18 months – the first Canadians to die in combat since the Korean War.
Those deaths have made Douglas recall how she’s observed every Remembrance Day since she was a girl – with the fervent hope that no more Canadians would die in military conflicts.
With the end of each war that Canada or the United States fought, Douglas said she always thought she was witnessing the end of war.
And although “Lest we forget” is one of the mottos for Nov. 11, Douglas said it doesn’t seem the country has learned from those wartime memories.
“It has just mystified me that we haven’t learned, and that we didn’t learn from the Second World War and then we didn’t learn from Korea, and then we didn’t learn from Vietnam,” said Douglas.
“I never dreamed that we’d be – in 2003 – so lacking in imagination that we would still be marching off to war because yet again another group of old men is sending someone else’s children to fight at whatever new battle they’ve decided is at hand.”