Welcome home, Rambi!
hmmmmm...yes... lost pocketbooks are such a drag. Well, get out your last Visa statement and use it to look up those automatic payment things.
Kilts - yes, I like them too -- and the long capes and all the rest of the regalia of the highland regiments.
WHat is Remembrance Day?
Remembrance Day is November 11th up here -- the equivalent of a veterans' day in other countries. People wear a red poppy emblem and lay wreathes, usually with poppies on them, at cenotaphs across the country. I'm not sure how widespread a symbol the poppy is outside of Canada, but it was inspired by Colonel John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields" -- McRae was a Canadian doctor WWI who worked in field hospitals in France in WWI until he died of pneumonia in 1918. He is buried near Boulonge.
amputesdeguerre.ca
In Flanders Fields
By Colonel John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
In case you're interested, I found a couple of pretty good photos of the main cenotaph (Canadian War Memorial) in Ottawa. In this one, the building in the background is the Chateau Laurier Hotel -- one of the early "railway hotels" in Canada.
primeau-canada.com
and this is a nice night shot of the same memorial from another photographer.
pbase.com
And that's the end of today's Canadian History 101 lesson. (o:
-croc |
