Canada will observe Remembrance Day this Sunday.
Throughout B.C. and across the country, small villages and towns will remember the sacrifice of young lives in wars that Canadians have fought and died.  In Fort St. James, Stuart Lake Lumber is no longer in operation.  However, Remembrance Day will unfold there again, just as it did back in 1999, when my dad wrote about the outdoor ceremonies in the town center here.

He also provided these images of the Vimy Memorial, taken during a pilgrimage to France and Belgium this past June to trace the history of Canada’s involvement in the First and Second World Wars.
We’re told the Canadian-led attack on Vimy Ridge marked the only significant success of the Allied spring offensive of 1917, and won for Canada a separate signature on the Versailles Peace Treaty that ended the First World War. It’s been said that for Canada, “Vimy marked the birth of a nation.”

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“Carved on the walls of the monument are the names of 11,285 Canadian soldiers who were killed in France and whose final resting place was then unknown. Standing on the monument’s wide stone terrace overlooking the broad fields and rolling hills of Northern France, one can see other places where Canadians fought and died. More than 7,000 are buried in 30 war cemeteries within a 20-kilometre radius of the Vimy Memorial. Altogether, more than 66,000 Canadian service personnel died in the First World War.”
 http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/memorials/ww1mem/vimy