Amnesia Day (Have an Armed Forces day so I can stay home but don't co-opt Remembrance Day)

Remembrance Day almost made it as a real and meaningful celebration of the sacrifices of the faceless thousands that have perished in war. There was a time in the aftermath of the war in Viet Nam when people recognized the ugliness of war – the broken bodies, broken lives and broken promises. Today those horrors are being morphed into a new reality that draws on those broken soldiers to legitimize a new reality of militarism, and Realpolitik (politics of expediency rather than morality).

How far we have strayed from the Canada that was about peacemakers, where soldiers were respected but not lionized. How far we have come from peace marches and debates to a ubiquitous military presence (predominantly in public events and the media) reminiscent of our saber-rattling neighbours to the south.

We festoon our vehicles with trunk magnets that claim our support for our troops and wave our flags and banners with a patriotic fervor reminiscent of darker times and darker nations, but make no mistake – this overt jingoism has nothing to do with the eleventh of November. It is not a fond remembrance but one steeped in regret and sadness and respect. Old soldiers, such as my father was, never talk about the wars in which they fought, not because they don't remember but because those memories are too ugly or painful or both.

The men and women who have died in the conflicts that gave rise to our annual celebration were a different kind of soldier. They were ordinary human beings – students, accountants, waiters, farmers – who put their lives on hold and on the line for something they believed in. And what they thought was critical for their offspring, us, to remember was that war is ugly and brutal and dehumanizing and should be reserved as a last resort rather than an extension of diplomacy and economics.

Remembrance Day, with its ominous timing and iconic red flower rises out of the War to End All Wars. Notice the prevailing sentiment encapsulated in that phrase. Sure we remember the poor souls (from whichever side) that lost their lives or were forever robbed of the wonders of youth. Sure we lay wreaths and shed tears and press-gang the local Lodges for all the grey-haired veterans we can drag or wheel into our community halls and schools (sort of like we do with our native peoples whenthe cameras are rolling). But when the festivities are done, don't we just abandon them again to their blank walls and inadequate care (or their squalor and povery if they wear buckskin)? And when the wreaths are taken or blown away do we remember that the collective voice of those who experienced the horrors and the bloodshed, who lie in some field of crosses in a foreign land, cried out to end the madness? To promise that their children and their children's children would not be dressed to kill or be killed?

Remembrance Day should stand as a tribute to the past and a reminder of the mistakes and evils of the past; we should not allow it to be co-opted by those who cry freedom with death on their breaths.