Members of the community, military personnel, city councillors, families and friends met on Nov. 11, 2024 at the National Military Cemetery on Beechwood Avenue to remember those who lost their lives for Canada.
Retired Master Warrant Officer Marc Grenier was there to remember some of his friends who were laid to rest in the cemetery. He emphasized the importance of Remembrance Day.
“We need to remember; we can’t forget what’s happened in the past. It’s going to happen in the future again and we need to never forget what’s happened so that we can keep going.”
Before the ceremonies started, Lt.-Cmdr. Craig O’Keefe was over at the back portion of the cemetery visiting the two plots where his two brothers would be laid to rest eventually.
O’Keefe served 39 years, starting in 1986, for the Canadian Military as a Maritime Subsurface Officer. He has three brothers who have also served time in the military – together serving for more than 130 years combined.
“Nobody had joined the military from the family before the four of us got in, but their two wives also joined,” O’Keefe said.
O’Keefe came in his uniform with two medals, one a special service medal for NATO deployments and the other a Canadian Forces declaration medal personnel receive after 12 years of service. An additional bar is added for every ten years, and O’Keefe currently has two bars.
“If I’m still serving in three more years, I’ll get another bar.”
Former journalist, diplomat and author, Geoff White, says he goes to Remembrance Day ceremonies every year to remember his parents and their experiences during the Second World War.
“My father was in the Royal Air Force in England during the Second World War,” White said.
“My mother lived through the Blitz in Liverpool.”
White said his mother was about 17 during the Blitz, a bombing campaign by the German Luftwaffe. “Night after night, [she] would have to flee her home with her ailing grandmother and sister to find shelter underground while the bombing took place.”
White said this year’s Remembrance Day was especially important to him in light of the most recent U.S. election of Donald Trump, “somebody who is an authoritarian, who has impulses which are extremely fascistic in nature.”
He said that this remembrance day it is important to remember what Canadian soldiers fought for in the Second World War, to “defeat those fascist tendencies.”
