Ideas - Why Canadian veterans are ambivalent about Remembrance Day

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

Remembrance Day. Every year we are called on to remember, to reflect on the sacrifices of those who fought in Canada’s wars. Veterans of those wars have a conflicted relationship with Remembrance Day: sometimes their own acts of remembrance include official ceremonies, while others avoid them altogether.*This the second and last of a two-part series exploring the post-war experience, gathered by the Canadian War Museum’s In Their Own Voices oral history project.

This is a CBC podcast. 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. In Flanders Fields, John McRae wrote his iconic poem on the battlefield in 1915, a day after one of his closest friends was killed

and hastily buried among the wild poppies of Flanders in Belgium. We are the dead. Short days ago, we don't. 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. faith with us who die we shall not sleep though poppies grow in Flanders fields in Flanders fields read by Leonard Cohen courtesy of Legion magazine welcome to ideas of I'm Nala Ayyed.

And welcome to the second of two programs based on the Canadian War Museum's Oral History Project entitled In Their Own Voices. I want to talk to you a little bit about your post-war life, but I have to ask you, and I'd love to know more about D-Day. Can you tell me a little bit about that? So many years I tried to forget about the whole thing, and then all of a sudden they wanted me to remember.

Michael Petru is a former journalist and war correspondent and is now historian of veterans' experience at the museum. He interviewed more than 200 veterans or their families to document their deeply mixed experiences adjusting to life after combat, including their complicated relationship with Remembrance Day itself. Yeah, I think a thing to do is to be seen to be remembering. I think it's sad when there aren't enough people out.

I love it. When we were selling poppies and my friend and I'd be there and someone would come along and say, oh my gosh, those medals are they ever beautiful? And I feel very conflicted about it. I feel kind of honored still that people would ask me to talk about my experiences and sort of read things I wrote about my experiences. And at the same time, remembrance day sometimes still makes me angry. This episode features excerpts from Michael's conversations with veterans, beginning with Benjamin Hurtwig. Somewhere in Flanders, Afghanistan, in Flandersfield, some shit went down. Flowers crosses the dead, et cetera, et cetera.

But the dead do not speak, John. Sometimes they leave letters. Sometimes they leave a room full of porn and candy wrappers that someone else has to clean. Carthago Delanda Est, Carthage must be destroyed, so on, so forth. Benjamin Hurtwig, reading his poem somewhere in Flanders, Afghanistan, a kind of retort to John McRae's in Flanders fields. You served our country, whatever that means. But I'm tired of hearing you go on about birds and sunsets,

and torches, and God knows what else. I'd rather meet your 100-year-old ghost on Remembrance Day. When everyone's drinking to forget the shit we volunteered to do in a country that wasn't our own. I'll buy you a beer, though I don't really drink much since my wife left. Don't sleep much either. Nobody sleeps well after war. Did you ever start sleeping again? Yes, I would say that the nightmares I had after Afghanistan, which dominated my sleeping life for a number of years, that I don't have them as often, that they don't hold the same power or terror for me.

I would say the energy of war, the sort of frantic, elevated physicality of it, has never fully left. So I think I'm still the product of my experiences and sort of that the reality of war, I think, will always be a part of my waking and sleeping life. Benjamin Hurtwig left for Afghanistan in 2006 when he was 20 years old. he came back a different person. Like many of us, Benjamin's memories of John McCrae's poem date back to high school. I remember reciting it at the, it was either the grade 10 or grade 11, Remembrance Day ceremony at my school in uniform. And I remember hearing the poem read after I returned from Afghanistan by a colonel in my regiment.

And I remember hearing the poem read after I returned from Afghanistan by a colonel in my regiment. And I remember hearing it after Afghanistan and feeling angry and angry at John McRae in some ways. Obviously, John McRae did end up dying in the war after he had written this poem. But I wanted to ask John McRae how he could speak in the voice of the dead. How do you know what the dead? would say, I mean, you were very much alive when you wrote this poem. So how can you,

how can you say we are the dead? These are the things that we wish to, to pass on to those who are living. And I carried that anger for a few years and stopped going to Remembrance Day ceremonies and eventually thought, I'm going to write about this. And I want, these are some of the questions I wish that I could have asked John McCray. Hurtwig went on to write much more than somewhere in Flanders, Afghanistan. His early poems about contemporary warfare became a book entitled Slow War, shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Awards. He taught a creative writing course designed with veterans in mind.

He's also just published a novel exploring the soldier's experience. Did you start going to Remembrance Day again? Have I started going to Remembrance Day ceremonies ever again? I have been asked to read at a few school Remembrance Day ceremonies to read from this book of poems. And I feel very conflicted about it. I feel kind of honored still that people would ask me to talk about my experiences and sort of read things I wrote about my experiences. And at the same time, Remembrance Day sometimes still makes me angry. It still makes me, I remember I went to one school in the Vancouver area, and the students, maybe 10, 11-year-old, and it was, I think, a boy school primarily.

They were goofing around, fooling around, not unlike a platoon of young soldiers, and the teacher was getting very angry at the boys, and they were playing with the candles, and he said, stop playing with those. candles those candles are each a dead soldier and I thought no they're not those are candles and these are young boys and we were young boys and I feel more sympathy for the young boys playing around than I do with the teacher who's trying to tell the boys something about warfare and remembrance which I'm not sure I fully believe I don't go to cenotaphs, I don't do much by way of those things, but I will seek out pockets of calm or quiet or ways to remember people in my life who've been impacted by war. So I still

will think and pray about men for my platoon who died during and after the war, remember them in my own way. And yeah, if I'm asked to read or talk about my experiences, I generally I'm happy to do that now, too. What are the things you're not sure you believe anymore? What are you conflicted about? Yeah. I mean, I think maybe it's to my own personal relationship with Remembrance Day as a young soldier, which was very much about getting drunk, even before I had experienced any

combat or any violence, and just sort of the feeling that there are. that you are being asked to feel a certain way or a member in a certain way, even if your feelings on a particular mission have changed, or if you feel like even as the war in Afghanistan has now come full circle and Canadians have withdrawn, tens of thousands of lives, both Canadian and Afghan have been lost, and Afghanistan is once again under the control of the Taliban. wondering what function does, does remembrance play in what happened in Afghanistan? Is there, are there healthy ways of remembering? Are there unhealthy ways of remembering? Are there ways of remembering that lead to further conflict?

Are there ways of remembering that lead us away from conflict as a nation? So I think, when I think of Remembrance Day, sometimes it just feels sort of like a rote performance. students reciting in Flandersfields, even though they don't necessarily know what it means or why they're being asked to do this. You stayed involved in a lot of commemorative activities. after the war, Remembrance Day, join the Legion as well. Yep. Why? Why was that important to you?

Oh, that was the most important thing because actually women had not been given a lot of credit. Blanche Bennett, 99 years old, is from Prince Edward Island. She served in the Canadian Women's Army Corps during the Second World War, during which she also met her husband, Murray. After the war ended, Murray built a career in the military.

She made something of a mission out of observing Remembrance Day. We were not really number one on the hit parade. You very rarely heard of having a big dinner at the Legion for the women. No way. But there was always a dinner for the men. and sometimes if you were invited I belong to the Legion you would go

but it was quite different the men won the war actually they were the ones fighting but we did our part and it is only in the last oh probably I'm going to say 15 maybe 20 years

that people are really beginning now to remember that women did a whole lot in the war, a whole lot, not a little bit, a whole lot. The very fact that we were the first, the Army was the first, and then the Air Force and the Navy were lost, and, yeah, we all had very important jobs. Why do you think it is that for so long women didn't get the credit that they deserved for having served? Well, I guess unless you're in line of action and carrying a rifle, you know, and wanting to shoot somebody and whatever, that seemed to be the thing. And we certainly didn't do that. We were issued a rifle, but we only had it for rifle practice.

We didn't carry it. We had gas masks. We certainly wore them all the time and had lots of blackouts. My goodness, almost every night you'd have a blockout, and that meant the whole city was black. It just seemed to be that we were not as important. A war is a man's thing.

You know, it's not something that women get armed for and go overseas to shoot somebody. That's not what we do. So did you join the Legion hoping to change some of these attitudes? I did, and I did. How? Well, number one, I decided, you know, there's a lot of stuff that I can do. And so first, it was selling poppies.

I sold poppies until I think I was 95. and we would go to the schools and talk to the children. And it was great for us because Murray and I and Barbara, our daughter, were all veterans, and that was great. And the boys especially were really keen wanting to know. First thing they asked, my husband, how many guys did you kill? I didn't kill anybody. But that's how they felt, and that's all they knew about the war,

was that war meant you had a gun and had to kill somebody. I get an article for the newspaper on that, and I said every young lad from the age of 14 or 15 should be given a chance to go overseas to visit. visit the graves, as we did, and have a look at the names and the ages on those tombstones. And I think their way of thinking would be a lot different when they came back. Well, what is it that you want them to understand about the war and about being a veteran as well? Well, kind of have to keep your nose clean if you want to stay out of war.

But once you get in it, yeah, it's a big challenge. Nobody should ever have to go through a war. We did three or four in a very short time. I hope for the last one I'm saying. I don't think we'd ever have another one. I did not want them to go to Afghanistan. I definitely would have made a lot of noise about that because I didn't think we had any business to go there.

When we were in France, for 30 years, we visited every grave that we could, where the Canadians were buried. It was unreal. The first time it was just, It just made turnic hold. It was so awful, see. But they are so well-looked after,

especially the ones in Holland. And, yeah, it was something. Oh, we also went to Vimy Ridge. And that was an experience. Went down in the trenches. And the kids, my kids, were just little. I think Barb was six. Patty was eight

It was only two years between three of them And so they were quite young They remember everything What would you talk about When you talked about the war with your kids What did they want to know and what did you tell them Well Murray had a great tale He said

Now you'd be kind to your mother Because she wore army boots Oh Murray You've got to come up with something better than that Anyway Yeah it means a lot to them. I don't think they ever bragged about it or said,

geez, my mother was in the war. But I'm sure when they were with their friends, they did say that. What does it mean to you to have served when you look back now and you think about your service? How do you feel about it? Well, right now, I'm on top of the world. Like, I'm the queen of the whole nine yards here

because there's so few of us left. you know and they think oh my God when they come in my room and they see all my pictures hanging there and uniform

and all that stuff you know they say God what did you do and I say well I don't think I did a lot but at least I served and remembering today

I did put the wreath on a couple years ago for the lady veterans. Yeah, there's always something that comes up, you know, and to remind you. I have another, maybe another big question. It might be hard to answer, but, you know, you have had, you know, special and unique experiences. And I just, I'm wondering, are there things about being a veteran of the Second World War that you don't think a lot of people understand, and you would like them to understand what that's like?

That is exactly what I would like everybody to know. I'd like them all to know that, yes, in 1942, when the women became available to join the service, we did. Nobody asked us, nobody told us. We did it on our own. We chose what we wanted to do. There were lots of jobs open. You choose the one you want.

Driver, telephone operator, typist, whatever you wish. And we did. Just did what had to be done, and you went and did it. That was brought home to me again a few years ago when we flew Ottawa, and we were asked to wear our medals, which you did. And when we were getting off the aircraft, the pilot was standing at the door, who happened to be a woman. And I thought, oh, my gosh, she has been flying this airplane. So, you know, they always talk to you, shake hands or whatever.

And she said, you were in the military. And I said, yes, a long time ago. and I said a very long time ago and she said my dear she gave me such a hug if it hadn't been for you I wouldn't be doing this job today

and I thought oh my gosh so I guess we did something that we should be proud of I like to think we did and I'd love it if ever everybody else thought the same. I think many people do.

Yep. Yeah. Second World War veteran Blanche Bennett, 99 then, in conversation with Michael Petru, historian at the Canadian War Museum. You're listening to Ideas, on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, on U.S. Public Radio, across North America, on SiriusXM,

in Australia, on ABC Radio National, on World Radio Paris, and around the world at cbc.ca.ca. You can also find us on the CBC News app and wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayyad. In 2020, the Canadian War Museum began an oral history project aimed at recording the experience of veterans in their own voices. Michael Petru leads the project and spoke with veterans of all of Canada's wars, focusing on the profound changes that came after they returned home. Michael Petru joins me now. Now that you've spoken to so many people about Remembrance Day,

how is your concept of Remembrance Day? changed? So remember and stay has always been important for me. My grandfather served in the Second World War. So it was something that I attended since I was young and has been important to me for those reasons. And as a historian and as a journalist, I've always had an interest in the way that the war has impacted the Canadian society. And I've appreciated the need to remember some of those sacrifices. But even with that background, it

does feel much more immediate and personal. For me as well, for me now, just because I've had these long, sometimes difficult, always revealing conversations with people, and we've talked about

remembrance. So it's become, there are now dozens, hundreds of these stories at you know, that I think about now in a way that I wouldn't have three or four years ago. I think it's changed as well that I have an appreciation for the many layered meanings that Remembrance and Remembrance Day can have for veterans in a way that perhaps I didn't before. I don't think I appreciated before this project how difficult remembrance can be. that's been a revelation for me over the course of these last two years and these interviews

is how complicated I think some of the feelings around Remerance Day can be for veterans. And yet, you know, it is a national day of remembrance, and so Canadians are called on to remember. Could you speak to, despite that difficulty for some of the veterans, why a number of others still want us to remember on this day? I think for a lot of veterans, their service was the most important, the most searing, the most sad, the most something they're the most proud of. It was and it is important.

And when you combine the intensity of that experience and the importance for good or for ill, memories surrounding those experience, and then you contrast that with the day-to-day life where most people don't know or understand or want to understand, you do have that one day where that changes. So I do understand the desire, and I think it's well-founded that those sacrifices are acknowledged. I should say, just to reflect wholly the, what I've heard, in these interviews, is I do recall one veteran of Afghanistan, you know, talking about that gap between the public understanding of conflict and the price that it extracts. And following that

by saying, that's a good thing. Like he said, I want to live in a society where most people don't need to think about these things. Most people don't have those memories. And I think that's, I think that's an important element as well. The fact that most of the time we in Canada don't need to think about conflict, the fact, the fact that most of us don't have direct experience of conflict, that makes us extraordinarily lucky. We're calling this episode Acts of Remembrance. Here again is Michael, this time interviewing Anuk Beauvais,

another veteran of the war in Afghanistan. Do you take part in Remembrance Day ceremonies like those on Remembrance? No, I'm not able. Yeah, I don't know, it's... No, I can't anymore. I don't know.

You, sometimes, I'm not the poppy, non plus, and I feel sometimes I don't even put the poppy on either. I don't feel the need to be there. I feel it. I remember it every day. I'm, I'm, I remember it all the

Anuk Beauvais lost a friend, Jason Warren, during the war in Afghanistan in 2006. She deployed there herself in 2007. Every day I get up and I think of all of that, there's not a time in the army. Every day I get up and I think about all that, all that time in the Army. There's not a day that goes by when I don't have a moment when I think of all I experienced in the Army. experienced in the army, what we had all gone through, whether it was a hundred years ago or in Afghanistan. And yet, I can't go to these ceremonies. I know there are some people who

might find it therapeutic to go. For me, it's the opposite. I'd rather go to the cemetery alone to see Jason's grave every July than show up in parades. I don't feel it. I can't. Could you explain to me a little more, what is it exactly that is so difficult? There's music that, you know, like in the ceremony, you know, like the corneuse There's music that is always played at the ramp ceremonies in Afghanistan. I can't listen to it anymore. The sounds of the bagpipes, everything that reminds me of the dead, in fact, over there in Afghanistan. It brings out emotions that I may not.

yet want to delve into. I'm also doing a bit of avoidance. I don't feel the need to be with people. I don't want to go to be with people to talk about our war stories. I feel personally I'm not there yet, or maybe I never will be. I feel, I personally, I'm not there again, or maybe I'll be. You said you remember every day. You said you remember every day. You said you remember every day. What do you remember? What are you thinking about? I'm going to...

I remember of Afghanistan like it was yesterday. I remember Afghanistan like it was yesterday. I remember Afghanistan like it was yesterday. I remember emotions or feelings. I have a lot of dreams. It's not necessarily nightmares, but I dream a lot,

which takes me back to a lot of the feelings and emotions from before. Sometimes it's just a flash. Sometimes it's just a flash. You're going through your day, and now you're thinking about the day we were bombed. I have another question on Afghanistan. So we have another question about Afghanistan.

So we're talking in January, 23. And a little over a year ago, the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan. How has that affected your thinking about your service and sacrifice? I'm really honest. I'm going to be really honest. When it happened, I thought, well, I knew that from the start.

We got it wrong. It's not going to, it's all right. It's all right. Having spent almost three years there, and at the end I left, I was like, we got it wrong. It's not sustainable. I wasn't surprised. We were all to this. I had no emotions, unlike a lot of veterans who found it really difficult.

About two, three weeks ago when I read that the Taliban had that women could no longer work for NGOs or attend universities. That seemed to hit me. I was like, what's going on? What's going on? It's incredible. That's even called my friend. That's not good. That's crazy.

That's when hit me more. I was so sad for these women. I find it sad for those people. Like, like, I really, I think it so terrible for these women, I think it I'm really, I think it's sad for this people. We are the dead. Short days ago, we lived,

felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved, and loved. 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 Remembrance Day

It's been nearly 80 years since the Second World War ended Yet 40 veterans from that war were still able to speak with Michael One of them is Fraser McKee He joined the Navy on his 18th birthday and served in the Second World War on convoy escort Judy. You personally mark Remembrance State now, 70, 75, 80 years later.

What is it that you remember then? Well, that's what I remember, that there are people involved. It's not just a war, the Japanese taking over islands in the Pacific or the Germans occupying France or the coastal France or running extermination camps or something like that. There are actually people involved. And if you were unfortunate or fortunate, depending on how you look at it, you knew some of them.

And then suddenly you realize that that's what happens with the war, that people you know and people that have lives and we're going to do all right for themselves probably. They're suddenly not there. They're lost, and their family have lost them. They've lost somebody. And that's what remembrance is about. remembering that there are people involved and that's what you remember.

Do you take part in Remembrance Day Ceremonies? Yes. Have you always? Not always, no. I go to Upper Canada College every year. I've been going, always, I've been busy sometimes or away or something like that, but I go out nearly every year. And all I do is walk down the aisle and sit at the front and they say, we have some veterans here from the war and it gets us to stand up. I place one of the reeds usually, or a recent day. I'm the only wartime one left now.

Even my friends would pretty well all die. But yeah, I do that and then I was on Remembrance Day itself. That was on a school day, it was on a Thursday. The Remembrance Day was Saturday or Sunday, I forget Saturday I guess. And I was at the one in Clarksland, Mississauga, placed the wreath there that day. Yeah, I think a thing to do is to be seen to be remembering. And I think it's sad when there aren't enough people out and people come out. I went to a coffee shop on the way home from one of these one time and I just went up.

And I guess I still had my medals on. I think I still had them on when I went to a Tim's and went to get a coffee and a donut. And a girl, a nice looking girl, standing beside him and said, are you a veteran? I said, yes, I've been at the Rembrandt State Service. She said, let me buy you a coffee. I want to thank you. I said, oh, I understand. She said, I don't know.

You like to do it. So she found, that really affected me, that she said, thank you for me. You know, I didn't do anything. I didn't kill any Germans. I didn't fight anybody off. All he did was my job, and yet she was thanking me on her behalf. That's rather nice, you know. And you get a reward like that.

That's a very much a reward, and that's only happened to once that one time. I've had people say thank you, but the first time anybody's actually done it. anybody's actually done something like that. They didn't know me from Adam, just standing beside her in the line up at Tim's or something. How did that feel when she made that offer? It had a big effect on me, just at the moment. And in general, in general effect, it had quite an effect on me, because it meant that there were people out there that felt you had done something for them

and that you weren't leading just an ordinary life in your own little tunnel by itself, connect you with the world at large. I think that's it as much as anything else. Does how you reflect on your own service or how you feel about Remembrance Day, has it changed over the years? Is it different now? Yes, it's changed, but the change is what happens is it gradually disappears into the the fog a bit. It's like driving across the country and you start till the sunny day and

the weather's lovely and it's the kind of atmosphere you like to be in and gradually it gets hazier and cloudy and not quite as nice and it's just country to pass through. And I think that's too bad. I think that that's why it's necessary for those of us like me that go to, That's why I go to Upper Canada College just to let these six or seven hundred students that are in the Great Hall there at the Lawson Hall at Upper Canada to see a veteran. I'm not showing off at all. I don't have enough medals. There are others that have far more medals than I do.

I only got through few. But I want them to see there are people that went out and did something not for us but for themselves, for the country as a whole. It's my service to the country. the country down some extent. I want to talk to you a little bit about your post-war life, but I have to ask you, and I'd love to know more about what you remember about D-Day. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Asked me what's days. I remember selling over that part. That's still quite clear, you know, and

We would do it all the little things like playing cards and sort of on the way over anything to kill time. Second World War veteran Russell Kaye, speaking with Michael about his memories of D-Day. I remember getting in within range of the beaches, and that's when we started hearing the gunfire, all kinds of gunfire, aircraft, explosions. There was all kinds of fire being from our barges. Our own guns were fired on the way in, there were off of the barges, things like that. That stuff I remember, and there was so much confusing of that stuff,

you forget a lot of other stuff. But I remember landing. I actually went in myself with the Winnipeg Rifles. I was artillery, but I went in. And we had Winnipegratefuls on our barges with us, that's some of the infantry units. And I remember going in with them, and I remember being on the beach, and I remember seeing German soldiers. As a matter of fact, the German soldier come up by me with a wheelbarrow.

There was another German in the wheelbarrow all shot up. I didn't know they were Germans until they get up right beside me. And then I seen a swath beak on their hat. I knew then that there were German prisoners, POWs. So they asked me for a cigarette. The eye wheeled, New Yorker asked me if you could have a cigarette. I gave him a cigarette, and then I directed them over. There was other German prisoners there, too.

So I directed them over where they were. Stuff like that, I do remember. late in life he was invited to return to France to visit for the first time since the war Can I ask you about your 2019 trip to France What was that like for you? That was great

I didn't want to go on that I had didn't have no intention whatsoever But they talked me in the going And I went with this group called the Wounds Warriors Association, which is an absolutely great group. And they sort of sponsored me. And it was actually one of the highlights of my life, I would say, going over there and retracing, going back to the areas where we had fought

and meeting people. I met a lot of citizens over there, French citizens. We're kids when we were there. Now they're up in their 60s, 70s. And they all had little stories to tell to. Well, why didn't you want to go? I really was trying to forget everything about the whole thing, about the past, about the war.

So many years I tried to forget about the whole thing, and then all of a sudden they wanted me to remember. Why don't you want to forget it for so many years? I don't know. It's just something that I didn't think about too often, or I sort of buried it, I guess. Did you join the Legion or take part in Remembrance Day services? Yeah, I was still a member of the Legion, and I have quite a remembrance of service here, usually conducted by myself, and it's another guy here.

And we conduct the member state services here. Why is it important for you to do that? I think everybody wants us to do that. A lot of the people, we go to the schools here too, and we did before the pandemic. I think they all like to hear the stories and, you know, be reminded of what the war is like, And there's not much good about a war that's mostly bad, but it's good to know about it.

What about you? People want to hear from you, but why are you willing to, or why do you lead these services and why do you speak to school children? I think it's important that they should know. I really do. I think it's important to kids, and the kids are always evident and willing to learn. They want to know. I want them to know the many things of a war that, you know, the cost, the cost in life,

the cost in everything, especially the cost in life. and the waste of, you know, the futility of war. There's so many other ways to solve problems rather than shoot each other. Russell Kay spoke with Michael Petru in 2022. years later, in August 24, Russell passed away. He was 100

years old. That same month, Blanche Bennett from PEI also died. She was 1001. Given what you heard from the different kinds of veterans, does Remembrance Day is it poised to change as we

lose the veterans of World War II? When I started this project in 2022, I thought maybe I'd be lucky to get one or two interviews with Second World War veterans, and I had

low expectations for what those interviews might entail. I never would have imagined that I would interview more than 40 veterans of the Second World War. I never would have imagined how profound, how intimate, how revealing they were. And having experienced that and haven't been exposed to these conversations with veterans in the Second World War has just made me so much more aware of what we're losing.

and a number of the veterans, the Second World War veterans that I interviewed over the last two and a half years have died. And I feel that loss profoundly, sometimes personally, because these are people that I felt quite close to even if they were just short interviews. But the loss is, or the sense of loss, is largely because I'm aware of what they represent. And they represent the last living link to a very important part of our history, the history of Canada, of the world, this massive confrontation and victory over fascism. And that was a tremendous thing. And to lose that as we are every day, it hurts. It hurts us as a country.

It hurts us as a people. We're, we are losing that link, and I do feel it. And it's a loss. It's a very special thing. This, on a personal level, simply having that experience has been enormously rewarding for me to have those conversations and I'm sure there are listeners that still have that opportunity with living relatives but hold on to it and take advantage of it because it is it is slipping away and and when it does go when we do lose those that last link we're losing

something very important and and that loss is profound. think that that loss will alter the meaning that we should derive or what we do on Remembrance Day? I don't think it should. We still live in the shadow of the Second World War. We still live in the shadow of the First World War. I don't necessarily mean shadow in a bad sense. I mean, no, you and I were both journalists.

We covered the Middle East for years. and I sometimes joke that all I was doing when I was reporting for the Middle East was covering the ongoing aftermath of the First World War. Yeah. And we were. It's true. We still live in a world that was shaped by that conflict. We still live in a world that was shaped by the Second World War.

So the victory over fascism in the Second World War with all the costs associated with it, the importance of that shouldn't change. and recognizing or remembering the importance of that should not change. But of course it will. Of course it will as we lose these living bridges to that time. I grew up at a time when Second World War veterans were not a rarity. My children are growing up in a time when they may never meet,

or at least knowingly meet, a veteran of the Second World War. and their experience and their memories of Remembrance Day and what that means will be very different than mine and of my generation. So, yes, I suppose that that personal connection, that living memory is changing, and that will shift how we as Canadians experience Remembrance Day. But I don't think the importance of what it means and specifically what the Second World War means should change. And I hope people are able to, especially younger people, are able to apply some of those lessons and recognize the importance of that confrontation with fascism in our current world today as well. I'm wondering what you will most remember after all those conversations on this day. All the conversations that I've had with veterans and their loved ones, regardless of their age or where they served, have moved me and in sometimes subtle

and in sometimes more pronounced ways, have shaped me as well. I've been changed and I've been shaped by this experience, too. but I think on Remembrance Day this year what I am most keenly aware of is that we're losing the Second World War generation so I think what is top of mind for me now is what an unexpected joy and privilege it was

to be able to have those conversations and feeling that loss or that the bittersweet awareness that this is something that I'll never have again. And sadly, in a few years, no one else will be able to have again either. And it's been just such a rewarding experience to have those conversations. So what's top of mind for me on Remembrance Day is it's gratitude. It's gratitude to have had these conversations. with these people, and it's gratitude to have had these conversations personally, and then

it's gratitude on a broader level because of what they did and what I and all of us owe them as a result. Michael, thank you for this conversation and also thank you for what you've done. Well, thank you for having me. It's been a real pleasure to talk about it. Thank you. You've been listening to Acts of Remembrance, the second of two episodes based on interviews with Canadian War veterans

conducted by historian Michael Petru. Audio clips were generously provided by the Canadian War Museum as part of the In Their Own Voices project, a collection of more than 200 interviews with veterans or family members. members. For more interviews and photographs, visit the Canadian War Museum's website, warmuseum.ca, or visit our website, cbc.ca.ca. slash ideas. Many thanks to Michael Petru, Avera Gibbs Lamy, and the entire team at the Canadian War Museum's project, as well as all the veterans who appeared in this episode. This episode was produced by me, Nala Ayyed, with help

from Matthew Laysen Ryder. Our technical producer is Danielle Du Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso, senior producer Nicola Luxchich. The executive producer of ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayyad.