Today is remembrance Day in Canada and in Sweden it's nothing. It's been an odd feeling this year it's the first time I have been completely removed from the holiday and while it is often overlooked, it's one that for is very touching and melancholy.
Both my grandpa's and my great-grandpa's fought in the Great Wars. And while I have opinions on why government's join wars and how they conduct themselves and choose to send people into danger I have great respect for a generation who unknowingly sacrificed their innocence sometimes for a just cause and sometimes for something they were not sure about. I celebrate Remembrance Day not to think of heroes, or conquests or national honour, but because someone who could not know what they were doing had to sacrifice a piece of their humanity and then were asked to ignore that once they returned home. In the present day and age it's one of the few times we still acknowledge the loss of a generation and the loss of innocence in our culture after all.
Sweden did not play an active role in either conflict and there's very little sense here of that history. Much less so than I expected given that the fighting was so close to where they were and they were in real danger for many years from invasion. I missed having that sense of awareness. One of the other Canadian teachers was thoughtful before the day and made poppies for people to wear and sent out a reminder and a copy of John McCrae's poem. I can not say how much I appreciated his thoughtfulness.
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