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Statement by the Prime Minister
November 9, 1998
Ottawa, Ontario
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien today issued the following Remembrance Day message:
"Eighty years ago - on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month - the Armistice took effect, bringing an end to the First World War. To four awful years of blood and tears. Victory came at a terrible cost. Young Canadians made the ultimate sacrifice on battlefields that live on as defining names in our national story: Passchendaele, the Somme, Ypres, and Vimy.
At the time, the world took a measure of comfort from the hope that World War One would be "the war to end all wars." A hope that has been dashed many times and in many places since: in the Second World War in Korea, in the Persian Gulf, in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. In so many corners of our troubled world over the decades.
Remembrance Day is our opportunity to say a heartfelt thank you to the gallant Canadian men and women who have never hesitated to answer when their country has called them to duty. Who time and again have risked everything so that we could continue to know the blessings of freedom, democracy and peace. Who have given their courage, their youth, and, tragically, in too many cases, their lives.
As a people, we owe them - and the families and loved ones they left behind forever - a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.
Today and every day we pledge to remember their sacrifice. For evermore."
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PMO Press Office: (613) 957-5555
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