By Mike Hinds
This week, Shirin Farrahi and Emily Sangster will help their fellow students remember the sacrifices past students at Lisgar Collegiate Institute made for their country.
The two students gave a presentation at the school’s Remembrance Day ceremony on three men whose names appear on plaques mounted in the school foyer. The plaques list names of former Lisgar students and faculty who served in the first and second world wars and in the Korean War.
“(War) isn’t something we’re really aware of,” explained Emily, a Grade 12 student who says that her great uncle was her only relative to have served in any war.
“We listen, and we say, ‘oh yeah, the soldiers made sacrifices and they fought in trenches,’ but we have no idea what that was like and we have no idea what the impact that it had on daily life was like. So we’re trying to put ourselves in their shoes as best we can.”
Emily, 17, said that one of the men chosen, Edward Holland, fought in the Boer War and won a Victoria Cross after defending his comrades from a Boer attack. Holland, the only student to receive the Victoria Cross, is listed on a separate plaque.
The second man, Alexis Helmer, fought in the First World War and, the girls say, inspired John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Fields.
The poem is traditionally read at Remembrance Day ceremonies.
“They both served together in the forces, and they’d both been fighting in the front lines for a while,” Emily explained.
“Their priest had died and then Alexis Helmer died and John McCrae was forced to perform his funeral ceremony because there wasn’t a priest any more.”
It was this chain of events that Emily says led McCrae to write the poem.
The third person, Harry Avery, was a spy and did reconnaissance missions in the Second World War. He was given the name “the frogman of Burma.”
Farrahi says her research has made her see Remembrance Day in a whole new light.
“From my past experience at Remembrance Day assemblies, they are very solemn but we don’t quite understand what it is we’re really understanding,” said the 18-year-old OAC student, who has no relatives who fought in any of the wars. “But I know that doing the research on this has really brought it to life for me.”
At Immaculata high school, a dramatization dealing with recruitment during times of war was arranged by a Grade 12 class for the school’s more than 1,200 students.
“The whole thing is about recruitment and how you have to obey orders no matter what they are,” said Bonnie Tobin, a drama teacher at the Catholic high school who has overseen the school’s Remembrance Day production for the past two years.
“We have a lot of veterans come, we have family members come as well as the students. It’s a packed gym.”
Both Glashan and Centennial public schools planned ceremonies that included a moment of silence to acknowledge sacrifices made by Canadian soldiers in various wars.
Margaret Pimm, vice-principal at Centennial, added that a student’s grandfather would be laying a wreath with two of the child’s schoolmates at the ceremony.
At Elgin Street public school, principal Terry Davies said the school’s ceremony would include readings by students of their own poetry, as well as a moment of silence.
Students were enthusiastic.
“I think it’s great to have a free country thanks to all of those who gave up their lives for a better tomorrow,” said nine-year-old Sarah Boivin, a Grade 4 student whose grandfather is a war veteran.
Other students say they feel the same way.
“If there wasn’t peace with Canada, right now I’d be mopping the floor,” said nine-year-old Aryn Holness, a Grade 4 student whose grandparents and great-grandparents were involved in various wars.
But won’t these memories of sacrifices made by Canadian soldiers fade with time?
“Maybe for some people,” says Aryn, “but not for me.”