To the Editor:
This is Veterans' Week, leading up to Remembrance Day Sunday, November 11.
Apart from religious holidays, I think Remembrance Day is probably the most important day of the year. If it weren't for the courageous men and women who were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in previous world wars and other international conflicts - to defend freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law - there wouldn't be much else to celebrate.
So it's absolutely necessary to make the effort every year to pay tribute to their sacrifice.
In Regina, Remembrance Day services are organized by a combination of local veterans organizations working together. I'm extremely grateful that they invite me to participate every year, to lay a wreath commemorating "the unknown soldier" - i.e., all those Canadians lost in war, but whose actual resting-places are not known.
The most moving moment in the ceremonies is always when - unannounced - Regina's surviving veterans march into the stadium, and the crowd greets them with a loud, spontaneous, persistent standing ovation.
Now mostly in their 80's and 90's, they don't stay long on the cold arena floor. But in those brief moments as the "Veterans Company" marches past, you catch a glimpse of what real heroism actually looks like. These are the people who put everything they had "on the line" to secure our values and our way of life.
And that's one of the vital messages from Remembrance Day - never take that democratic way of life for granted. It was preserved at too great a cost to be eroded by neglect, cynicism or indifference.
A healthy democracy depends entirely on informed, engaged citizens. When any political party betrays the public's trust or tampers with the fairness of elections or undermines our democratic institutions, the remedy is not to drop-out, complaining "they're all the same", but to fight-back, expose the wrong-doing and demand better!
And another vital Remembrance Day message is about a generous response to veterans' needs. Whether their service stretches back to Korea and World War Two, or to more recent missions in Afghanistan and Libya, or other deployments in-between, we share a national obligation to ensure physical, medical and psychological support services of the highest calibre.
It's the least we must do, lest we forget.
Ralph Goodale, MP, Wascana, SK.
