OTTAWA – Silence is the same.
In this horrible pandemic year 2020, a year in which everything had to change, the Day of the Fallen rite at Wednesday’s National War Memorial also had to adapt.
Gone were the crowds that piled up around the cenotafio in Ottawa and spread through the adjacent streets, and this year they were told to stay home.
Artillery has fired a 21-gun salute, the sound resonating a little more in the empty streets. The office windows beyond the monument, usually crowded with other people attending the ceremony, were empty, but a handful of staff in the structure were empty. hunting from the roof of the East Parliament building.
The Canadian Armed Forces Center Orchestra continues to play, their shoes waxed and their uniforms in a hurry. Some veterans still attended the ceremony, their medals polished and their greetings still fresh.
In a general year, more than 30,000 others can go en masse to downtown Ottawa, from the sidewalks and from the east side of Parliament Hill. When they hit 11 a. m. , this mass of humanity remains in perfect silence and despite everything it replaced in 2020. On Wednesday, that silence remained the same.
But much of the rite is different.
Danny Martin, director of the Royal Canadian Legion ceremony, said they knew beforehand that this year would be another for COVID-19.
“By June, we knew we were passing by to be affected by him, we knew it wasn’t happening to die,” he said.
The legion broadcast the rite live and television networks have broadcast it across the country, however Martin said the switch to an absolutely virtual occasion was never part of the plan.
“In the minds of the infantrymen who fought, it is a physical thing, and we need it to be a physical thing,” he said.
Health regulations prevent them from having more than a hundred people on site, so they tried to come with as many veterans teams as possible. In a general year, a wide variety of dignitaries placed flower crowns, but this year only a few, adding the Prime Minister and the Governor-General, did so at the ceremony. Dozens more were placed in The Cenotaphile in advance.
Martin said that for many veterans, a live rite is essential
“They come from a world where generation doesn’t exist and they don’t relate to photographs disseminated in Zoom,” he said.
COVID-19 is fatal for others over the age of 70 and the average age of World War II veterans in Canada is 94. Martin said with that in the brain that Canada’s oldest veterans stayed home this year.
“We don’t have any World War II veterans here because it’s too harmful to them. “
Bill Black, president of the Ottawa bankruptcy of the Korean War Veterans Association, represented his group of 105 members.
While in Cenotaphile, 26 of his fix members were at the Perley and Rideau Veterans Health Center in the suburbs of Ottawa, which had thirteen COVID-19 deaths.
Black said the legion had done a remarkable task to keep the rite as much as possible and said we hope that next year everyone will be able to return.
“It would be great to be back here, ” he said.
He said that attending the rite was a constant for many of his colleagues and that he looked forward to returning.
“We have one that will turn 100 next month, but it is still active. It has been coming for many years, but it may not today. “
Today we are at war, but we are in a war for our individual and collective aptitude and well-being.
Gen. De. Guy Chapdelaine Division, general chaplain of the Canadian Armed Forces, said COVID-19 had forced the distance among Canadians, but replaced the goal of recalling.
“Our distance from others does not diminish our gratitude or the inspiration we extract from the example of these heroes. “
Rabbi Reuven Bulka also referred to the rite and said that the pandemic may all better perceive the sacrifice suffered through the soldier.
“Today we are not at war, but we are in a war for our individual and collective fitness and well-being,” he said. “Those of us who have never been through war now have a broader concept of what it means to separate from those we enjoy. Each of us has been separated from those we enjoy”.
Bulka said veterans sacrifice others at a key point.
“Our veterans, whom today and always, we have selected to fight for our country, for our freedom. Knowing that this meant the separation of his family.
He said the sacrifices continued this year when infantrymen were painted in paint-painted long-term care facilities.
“When the care services were un staffed, who did we call?Our soldiers.
Twitter: RyanTumilty Email: rtumilty@postmedia. com
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