Susan Whitney reflects on Remembrance Day
Remembrance has been at the forefront of public life in Ottawa for the past three weeks. On October 22, a sombre ceremony at the National War Memorial marked the first anniversary of the horrific attack that began at the war memorial and shifted rapidly to Parliament, leaving Corporal Nathan Cirillo dead, the downtown core locked down, and Canada’s capital on the screens of news networks across the globe. On October 30, the local and national news media ran stories on the 20thanniversary of the 1995 Referendum in Quebec, when Quebeckers voted by only the slimmest of margins to remain in Canada. As I write, Ottawans are deep into this year’s cycle of Remembrance Day reflections and commemorations, which will culminate in a second ceremony at the National War Memorial at 11am on November 11, the moment the guns fell silent on the Western Front in 1918. For an historian like me, these are thoughtful times.
Professor Whitney teaches the history of France in Carleton’s Department of History.
For the rest of her blog, published for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, click here.