Remembrance Day in Hope began with a chill in the air and frost on the ground.
A march from the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 228 started at 10:30 a.m. Nov. 11, with a colour guard and three bagpipe players leading the crowd of veterans, members of the RCMP, local organizations and the Hope Secondary School band.
The procession arrived at Memorial Park and were soon surrounded by a crowd of several hundred. As the band played, wreaths were laid which blanketed the front of the cenotaph.
Veterans present at the ceremony were given special mention, including 101-year-old Mavis Wannamaker.
“She was a spotter and she saved many lives because she had the intelligence and the quick knowledge to be able to identify the difference between a warplane coming into London, part of the terrible bombing of that city in the Second World War,” said Rev. Ken Wotherspoon.
“Those memories are in her head and she can talk about them today. But I know when I see her face and she lays her wreath about the mixed feelings you have…also the glory part of actually having colleagues that are closer to you when you move out of the trench or you pick up a loved one on the streets after the bombing in London. So really, we remember the work that Mavis did, and she’s still with us. And we remember the work of those countless thousands who are now on the other side.”
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Wotherspoon led the gathering in prayer and shared his thoughts, inspired by musician and activist Buffy St. Marie and the prophet Micah.
“If you feel in your bones or in your conscience a feeling that something is going wrong for your neighbour, or something’s going wrong in your community or in your world, you as one person, as a person that can move out and say something or do something about it, do justice says Micah and it will bring us back” Wotherspoon said in his parting address to the crowd, inspired by Micah 6:8.
“And use kindness. Think of kindness. That’s the sort of gentleness that you carry with you that is a noble characteristic. It’s the opposite of the thing that takes over too often. The thing we call hatred…So take that torch, folks, that’s handed to you in justice, kindness and humility. And little by little we will work to the fulfillment of the day where there will be peace and no more war.”
Wotherspoon also mentioned Buffy St. Marie several times during his address and prayer, calling her a kind of prophet. He recited the lines to her song Universal Soldier and remembered how she once said her weapon of choice, the one she carried with her to those who are in pain or suffering or in hatred, is her smile and her kindness.
As the ceremony drew to a close, the sun peaked through and graced the departing march and green and red wreaths laid out on the cenotaph.
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