Remembrance Day

lest we forget 🇨🇦


 

“In Memory of Those Who Lost Their Lives So That We May Live In Peace”
Remembrance Day – November 11th 2020

lest we forget


 

“In Memory of Those Who Lost Their Lives So That We May Live In Peace”

The Colours of Vancouver’s Regiments, Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver.

Lest we forget

Dedicated to Captain Matthew Dawe, commander of Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry based in Edmonton, Alberta. He was one of six Canadian soldiers, along with an Afghan interpreter, killed in 2007 when their armoured vehicle struck a roadside bomb approximately 20 km southwest of Kandahar City. Captain Dawe’s mother Reine was this year’s Silver Cross Mother at the National War Memorial Remembrance Day service in Ottawa. 🇨🇦

WPC: Silence

The Cenotaph, Victory Square, Vancouver

More than twenty thousand men, women and children standing in silence for two minutes at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month during the 91st Annual Remembrance Day Service in 2015.

In response to this week’s photo challenge from Cheri…“What does silence look like? Show us your take in a photograph.”

Remembrance Day 2017

Victory Square, Vancouver

Whitehall, London

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Vimy, France

Lest we forget

 

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

Since our memorable 2012 visit to the Canadian National Memorial in Vimy I have posted many of my photographs from that moving visit over the past four years together with my video Lest We Forget made from those photos. To commemorate today’s solemn celebrations I am posting links to two of the posts for those of you who might wish to revisit them and welcome those of my new followers who might be interested in seeing them for the first time.

Remembering The Battle of Vimy Ridge: April 9-12 1917

Remembrance Day 2013

Lest we forget.

WPC: Resilient

In this week’s final Weekly Photo Challenge of the year Ben asks us to “share a photo of something that says “resilient” to you. It could be a local landmark that has survived through the decades …. or of a ritual or tradition that you (or people in your community) have successfully preserved. Show us something that has endured.”

resilient

What could be more fitting for this final day of the year than this photo from the Remembrance Day Ceremony around the “local landmark” of the Cenotaph in Victory Square here in Vancouver on November 11th this year.  It is an event that has been respectfully preserved and attended by many, many thousands each year and is certainly something that has “endured,” as it has all over the world.

If you would like to see more images from this year’s ceremony and read a special story that I wrote about it, open drawer 21 of my New Year’s Eve Retrospecteave that I posted today. No, that is not a misspelling and the reference to the drawer will become quickly evident.

On yet another day of terror our sympathy and thoughts are with those killed and injured in Istanbul today to whom I would like to dedicate today’s post. We will all need to remain resilient in the year ahead.

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Remembrance Day 2016: One Story

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Private William Teichrib, South Saskatchewan Regiment, R.C.I.C.

I never knew William Teichrib, but I do now.  He died at the age of 22 in northern Belgium.  I was introduced to him by his proud relatives today at the 92nd Remembrance Day Service at the Cenotaph in Victory Square here in Vancouver.

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As always it was a moving ceremony attended by many thousands, young and old, all of us standing reverently listening to the Prayer of Remembrance, the playing of the Last Post, and in quiet thought during the Two Minute Silence; then The Lament played on the bagpipes by Pipe Major Vern Kennedy, The Rouse, the commemorative Flypast by 407 Maritime Patrol Squadron, and the singing of In Flanders Fields by the Vancouver Bach Youth Choir.

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Not far from where my wife and I were standing I noticed a family proudly holding the photograph of a loved one together with his medals and regalia.

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At the end of the service I made my way over to them and introduced myself. I then asked if they could tell me about their fallen family member, which they were only too happy to agree to as well as allowing me to take their photograph.

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It was then that I was introduced to Private William Teichrib by his two great grand nieces Vanessa and Sarah and his grand nephew George.  I learnt that he was born in Morton Manitoba and died on October 15th 1944 at the Battle of the Schelte in Northern Belgium serving in the South Saskatchewan Regiment. This was Vanessa and Sarah’s first Remembrance Day Ceremony and it was clear that they were so proud to be there to keep alive the memory of their great grand uncle who like so many died too young.

We attend the Remembrance Day Ceremony in Victory Square every year but meeting Vanessa, Sarah and George made today’s ceremony more meaningful than ever. Just one story among so many, but one that moved us deeply.

Once home I searched William Teichrib’s name and immediately found it on the  Canadian Virtual War Memorial of the Veteran Affairs Canada website and learnt that he is buried at the Schoonselhof Cemetery in Belgium located in a suburb in Antwerp. Through the website I was also able to find his name in the Second World War Book of Remembrance on Page 459, which is displayed in the Memorial Chamber of the Peace Tower in Ottawa on October 3rd each year.

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Now it was time to learn about the Battle of the Schelte, which I am ashamed to confess was new to me.  Once again through the Veteran Affairs Canada website I was able to learn about this vital battle which opened up the port of Antwerp to be used to supply the Allies in north-west Europe. The battle took place in northern Belgium and southwestern Netherlands  from October 2 to November 8, 1944, with the first convoy carrying Allied supplies able to unload in Antwerp on November 29.  At the end of the five-week offensive, the victorious First Canadian Army had taken 41,043 prisoners, but suffered 12,873 casualties (killed, wounded, or missing), 6,367 of whom were Canadians.

Private William Teichrib, now a name and no longer a statistic, was one of them.

This post is dedicated to his memory with thanks and gratitude to all of our fallen heroes on this day of remembrance.

We will remember them.

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View of Antwerp with the frozen Scheldt” (1590) by Lucas van Valckenborch.