Canadian Remembrance Day Ceremony

Every year, for more than seventy-five years, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of this eleventh month, Canadians come together to pay tribute to the sacrifice of so many of our countrymen.

On this Remembrance Day, we are half a world away from our country. But anyone from any Canadian city or town would not feel out of place here at this memorial in Arrowtown.

Many of the dates on the monuments are the same. They speak of a history we have shared, and the wars we fought side-by-side. They remind us of the young lives -- the thousands and thousands of young lives -- so brutally cut short. The families they never returned to. The wives and children who never again feel their warm embrace. The grateful nation whose thanks they would never hear. The full lives that should have been theirs.

There are memorials like these in every nation of the Commonwealth. Each stands as silent testimony to the horrible sacrifice over two world wars.

And each reminds us of the values we share -- the values for which these men and women died. They remind us that freedom and democracy can never be taken for granted. That we enjoy them today because young men and women have paid the price for them -- with their lives.

In Canada -- as in other countries throughout the Commonwealth -- it is sometimes fashionable to belittle what we have... what we have built together. And certainly to take it for granted. It is at moments like this that we are reminded how shortsighted that is. As we pay tribute today to the thousands who fell, let us also commit ourselves anew to the values of freedom and democracy, of tolerance and understanding, that they fell defending.

Together, let us mourn those we have lost. Together, let us re-dedicate ourselves to the values we hold in common.


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