W.-IITBY R PEUE88>WEDNESDAY;ýNGVOBRBJ, 199PAGE PAGE SEVEN* "My dear fellow Canadians, these are hard tirnes. We ail must tighten our belts. We must practice resraint. Restraint, rny dear fellow Canadians, restraint (urp),- restraint, restraint!" The symbolism of Rememberance Day - the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh inonth - has always been to me its most powerful image. The generals who chose. that hour to sign the armistice that ended the First World War truly believed that they had just fought "the war to end war." 0f course it didn't last and twenty-one years later the world fought an aven dirtier war. I was born in March ofî 1945 as that war was grinding to a close. Remembrance Day was a school holiday in the fifties and services and recitations were held the day before. Looking back on those years, it had littie meaning to me - both wars were part of a distant past,,- long before rny time. Nothing much sticks in my memory except the playing of the Lest Post over the school P.A. followed by two minutes silence. The war must have been very real to many of myW teachers, since it had only finished a few years earlier, yet-- any feelings of private grief or suffering were kept discreetly - away fromn our impressionable minds. Remembrance Day celebrations during my youth were a lot more restrained than for Armistice Day between the wars. Following World War I, people celebrated the end of war - the monuments were large and imposing with ail the symbolism________________________________________ of victory. World War II was the enid of innocence. In 1945__________________________________________ there was no public certainty in a lasting peace. The world was plunged into the Cold War, the partition of Europe, the Korean War, the H bomb, atomic testing, the Suez crisis. Few new monuments were built for World War IIl...... names were simply added to the old ones - and later, Korean War casualties as well. There was little cause for celebration. The prevailing image of war to a child growing up in the fifties was not tranches or tanks or guns or aven soldiers but rather the atomic bomb. Both sides were building them bigger and better and more destructive. The next war was almost certain to, be the last. I have vivid memories of the Cuban missle crisis. I was only sixteen, but kids just a few years older were scared shitless of getting censcripted just te, fry in a nuclear war. Fortunately nobody hiccuped and both sides inched back - jg from the brink. The Cold War peaked with the Cuba crisis - both siý¶es got a whiff of the reality of nuclear war. Since . . .. then, they have neyer again confronted each other directly. Each successive war this century bas been less glorieus than the one befere. The victorlous arinies of the First World War declared the end of ail war - the. victers of the Second Werld War did net. It is ironic that the wars that may indeed have brought an end te, warfare for this century had no victors - only losers ... and millions of casualties. The United States lest its teste for war in the mud of Viet Nam, and Russia in the mountains of Afganistan. In the States the veterans of Viet Nam had to pay for their own memorial, but unlike otherî war monuments, this one hes ne glery, ne heroes - enly memories ef wasted human lifa. F REMEMRA E DAY CEBEMONY AT THE CENOTAFH NOVEMBER 11, 93 Perhaps the real herees of Viet Nam - and Afganistan - were Fifty years ago, Whitby was marking the anniversary of the end of the First World War, just the draft dodgers and deserters who were prepared te as a second war was heating up in Europe. Forty Whitby beys were kcilled in the Firot World renounce their citizenship and face imprisonment rather War and 31 in the Second World Wà r. Whltby ArdaiveS photo than . fight a senseless war. Both wars were ultimately stepped by the detarmined opposition of ordinary people. their Communist governments and aven leave the Warsaw Pact. Will the United States respend with the same prenouncament for the Amnericas? - an end te meddling in the 75S YEARS, AGO affairs of Latin Amarican countries? from the Thursday, November 5, 1914 edition of the Remembranca Day means a lot more te me now than it WHITBY OAZEr AND CHRONICE did when the services were a compulsory part of the school e The Town of Whitby's three-year agreement to ha sarviced by the Home Telephone curriculum. The world bas changed simca then. My Comipany, is up for renewal. remamberances are net of soldiars who diad but of the avents e Haflowe'en was celebrated with a maSurede baîl at the Ontario Ladies' Collage. of my own lifetime. a Thomas Cussion, manager of- Sir Hanry PellaWes Meadowbrook Fermn in Pïckering And somahow the symbohîsm of the eleventh heur of the Township is the new proprietor of the Royal Hotel. eleventh day of the eleventb month is as pewerful in 1989 as a There are many new homes being built in Whitby this fall. it was in 1918. i J-.~-- tJ