Barry Ellsworth: Wear your poppy with thanks for our veterans

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The original enlistment number was 1.1 million, and now there are about 9,000 left.

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Their average age is 100.

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The number of Second World War veterans is slowly diminishing, and the danger is the memory of their sacrifice will cloud and finally disappear in the mist of time.

We must not allow that to happen.

The world wars, Korea, Afghanistan — Canadians died too soon, lives were snatched away, lives unlived.

Those men and women to allow us to live the privileged lives we enjoy.

As you put on your red and black poppy, do not do it with sadness, but with thanks because the veterans who died in all Canada’s wars, I think, would be insulted if you did not find the joy they preserved and willed to us through their sacrifice.

Each year the Remembrance Day memorials are marked by the appointment of a National Silver Cross Mother who has lost a son or daughter in the wars, including Afghanistan. The tradition began in 1919 at the end of the First World War.

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This year’s mother, Mrs. Nancy Payne, lost her son Randy to Afghanistan. He was killed in action on April 22, 2006, while serving as a member of the close protection team. Randy died along with three other soldiers when a roadside bomb struck the military vehicle they were travelling in.

Payne happened to be home alone when she found out her son had died.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she told the Royal Canadian Legion in an interview. “I know when they join, you think it’s possible that something could happen but you never think it would happen to your own.”

And yet—

We continue to ready our military sons and daughters, husbands, spouses, brothers, and sisters for war; they’re always preparing for it.

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Today’s powder kegs haunt us in a world whereby tyrants and bullies hold the matches.

Russia, China, North Korea, and yes, a new addition in the stable of chaos, the United States under President Donald Trump.

The $27.7 billion Canada plans to spend for 16 of the F-35 warplanes is misguided — we cannot fight Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi and Trump, who wants us to become the 51st state.

Be that as it may, we enjoy an unparalleled freedom thanks to Canadians and Allied forces who died to preserve it.

This year is the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. More than one million went to fight, 45,000 of them never came home. On this Remembrance Day, Prime Minister Mark Carney saluted them.

“When they have been called to serve, Canadian Armed Forces members have always answered. As Canadians, we must fulfil our responsibility to them in turn. By remembering the service of our veterans and retelling their stories. By honouring their patriotism with our own. By guarding, in our time, the freedom they fought and sacrificed for.

“Lest we forget.”

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