Rembrance Day thoughts...........

The guard used to wave me through because he knew me and the dark-blue Cutlass I drove.  I was off to pick up my father at the rubber lab he oversaw at the National Research Council on Montreal Road and the shortcut was through the Rockcliffe Air Base.  Now closed, it was the perfect route to get from our home to Dad's office.  I picked him up because I wanted the car.  I had just been awarded my driver's licence.  I was 16, it was heady stuff. 

I think of my Dad, as Remembrance Day dawns.  He was considered by the Canadian Government too important to have been allowed to enlist because he was instrumental in developing synthetic rubber.  Natural rubber was unavailable because the Burmese rubber trees were inaccessible, so my Dad was a key player in getting around this problem.  Rubber is one of the foundations of civilization as we know it.  Think about it.  Rubber is everything everywhere.

I had another uncle who answered the call and served with distinction in Italy.  B had an uncle who was killed in Italy by a sniper at the tender age of 24.  His father was with the British Merchant Navy.  Another uncle was with the Indian Army.  All served with distinction.  One other of my uncles was also considered too important to serve.  He was deputy minister of finance and had to stay in Ottawa to fund the war.  But we honour them all every Remembrance Day, as we have since I was a young child.

This year, we will be going to the Cenotaph in Cochrane -- regardless of the -18 temperatures expected.  Watching coverage of the Cenotaph in Ottawa, I am a tad nostalgic.  Having lived there most of my life, I remember going there every year to remember the fallen. 

We must never forget.