Rebel Matters 227 – A Century of Remembrance

 

Old City Hall Toronto – Nov 11 2018

 

 

November 11, 2018 was the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the war dubbed as the war to end all wars.   In honour of the Armistice, Special K and I went down to what we, in Toronto, call the old city hall, where the Cenotaph, one of our war memorials, was erected in 1925.  In this country, more than two generations have lived in a time of peace and have no first hand knowledge of the realities and horrors of war.  What would another world war look like?  In the face of some 14, 000 nuclear weapons spread over nine countries, one deployed bomb would almost certainly result in the deployment of many others, decimating the world population and ending civilization as we know it today.  Sobering.   So I think it is important to reflect on the sacrifices made by others and past generations to mitgate the ravages of military confrontation.

 

During breakast at a local cafe, Special K and I had a chance meeting with a woman who was from Sweden.  We struck up a conversation with her and found out she had never experienced a Remembrance day event.   We invited her to join us and I think we may have overwhelmed her with our non-stop anecdotes of Canadian history and military efforts.

This Sunday November 11, at the Cenotaph, we observed the customary two minutes of silence at 11:00am followed by poem recited in English, Oji-Cree, and French,  a thought provoking address by our Mayor,  and a reading of the poem In Flanders Fields, written by Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae in 1915.  

Have a listen to my sound scene audio of an historic remembrance day.

Part of the program is reproduced here:

Committment to Remember (read in English, Obi-Cree, and French)

They were young, as we were young,
They served, giving freely of themselves.
To them we pledge, amid the winds of time,
To carry their torch and never forget.
We will remember them.

Address by Mayor John Tory

Hymn to Freedom

When every heart joins every heart and
Together years for liberty,
That’s when we’ll all be free.
When every hand joins every hand and
Together moulds our destiny,
That’s when we’ll all be free.
Any hour any day, the time soon will come
When men will live in dignity,
That’s when we’ll all be free.
When every man joins in our song and
Together singing harmony,
That’s when we’ll all be free.

In Flanders Fields

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.

Here’s the audio

 

War courtesy of: Jamison491
Barking, crying and other sounds of human suffering courtesy of: http://soundbible.com
Photos:  Mine

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Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters 217 – Tales from the 1960’s and Back

“Why can’t we just do everything we can while we’re here for one another?” – Pearl Goodman, 2013

On today’s show I interview Pearl Goodman who has written Peril: From Jack Boots to Jack Benny.  In 300 pages, Pearl gives us portraits and vignettes of what it was like growing up in the nineteen-sixties and seventies.   This was a time when many holocaust survivors had ended up in cities like Toronto putting geographical if not psychic distance between them and the horrors of World War II.  Everything about her childhood is coated, clouded and influenced by her parents’ experience during the war and after.

Her parents were survivors of the Nazi’s attempt to exterminate the European Jews.  The remainder of their lives was infused with this terrible knowledge, the death, the suffering of entire family members, friends, neighbors and many others left behind.    As we roll ever closer to the 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II, the numbers of survivors who can still remember and tell us anything of those times are dwindling to a precious few.   All the stories we can find, first-hand, must be sought out, recorded and shared.  And those who can relay much of those untold stories and insights, as the survivors of World War II pass on,  do so as translators, interpreters and paraphrasers of the original tellings.   Ms. Goodman and other children of survivors must speak for them because they no longer can.

It is said often that we are doomed to repeat history if we do not learn from it.    Indeed, genocide has been attempted and succeeded many times to greater and lesser degrees before that war and after.    And Jews throughout history have been no stranger to attempts to being eradicated and removed from everywhere we have ever called home.   We see the story of the holocaust repeated over and over again in small and big ways in the modern era in such places as:  Cambodia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, The Congo, and Pakistan.

In that sense, Ms. Goodman is not just telling her parents story and her own, but the story of all survivors and immigrants trying to overcome the persecution and oppression of their birth country.  Join me in my conversation with the author, on a pleasant spring evening in a local restaurant on the very street that Pearl grew up on.

Listen up:

Or download media:  Hotfrm 217 (33mb 36mins)

Links:

http://www.bridgeross.com/peril.html

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/peril-from-jackboots-to-jack/9780987824462-item.html

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/peril-pearl-goodman/1113066890?ean=9780987824462