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Remembrance Day · I’ve always cared about Remembrance Day; never been to war, but I’ve lived close to a couple and seen what happens when the wrong people win one. But here in Canada, those memories are growing dim; my uncle Allen Scott died in the Netherlands in 1944, but the number of people with even that direct a connection to what we still call “The War” is growing smaller (and I just came back from a pleasant visit to Germany, hanging out with our former enemies). That was until this decade. Now, our young people are falling in war in Afghanistan; these ones, I mean. I’m touched to see that some of them are having their identities immortalized online; thanks to whoever’s doing that work. The bad guys in Afghanistan are really genuinely bad; I don’t think there are many of us who object to taking them on, or to trying to give the long-suffering Afghans a leg up. Lots of Canadians are worried whether what we we’re trying to do can be done; and it doesn’t help that our work in Afghanistan makes us a nominal ally of one side in the botched, duplicitous, brutal war next door. Whatever; Remembrance day is—or should be, anyhow—becoming more relevant, more vital, more central. But the troops that are important are the ones who are alive and working; if you’re a Canadian you can send ’em a message; I assume other countries have similar systems. [Update: What Rob said.]
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