It was an unseasonably warm day as a large crowd gathered at the cenotaph in Owen Sound for Remembrance Day.
The past two years, the ceremony has looked very different due to the pandemic with pared down attendance.
This year, the community gathered in-person, with the crowd filling the space in front of the library, on the 8th Street Veterans Memorial Bridge, and some across the river.
The parade to the cenotaph was shorter, starting out at the Royal Bank downtown to allow for a shorter walk for older participants.
The number of WWII and Korean War veterans in the community decreases every year as some pass on.
“There’s not too many left, you have to be at least 90 to have gone to Korea,” says 90-year-old Leonard Smith, who is a local Korean War veteran who attended today’s ceremony in Owen Sound. He joined the military in 1952 and served for two years in Korea. In Canada, he was also stationed in White Horse, Yukon and Churchill, Manitoba. Smith was a paratrooper who did 37 jumps out of a plane. He had two brothers and a brother-in-law who went to Korea with him.
“I enjoyed the service,” says Smith. Who, when asked what he would like people to think about today, says, “Just hope that these wars cease. I look at all that happens in the wars is— these big shots all want more land, more control of the people and that’s why they send their people out.”
Today, the community honoured those who have died and those who have served throughout Canada’s history, including veterans of more recent deployments like Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Iraq and Afghanistan. Currently, there are soldiers deployed in places all over the globe, including Operation Reassurance, a NATO deterrence mission in Central and Eastern Europe. It’s Canada’s largest international military operation at the moment.
Master Corporal Keelan Fischer is from Underwood, and a member of the Grey and Simcoe Foresters primary reserve infantry regiment out of Owen Sound.
He took part in Operation Reassurance last year in Latvia. It’s a NATO deterrence mission in Central and Eastern Europe that was agreed upon by NATO member countries after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and is Canada’s largest international military operation at the moment.
He was part of the vigil today and notes, “It’s very important for us. A number of us, obviously have relatives who have served—or we are serving, ourselves, as well as, we’ve had peers who have passed away, so us performing these duties– it’s a critical task that we’re more than honoured and happy to do.”
He adds, “We have to teach the current and future generations about the importance of what this day means.”
Remembrance Day #OwenSound pic.twitter.com/pXq0Bktfle
— Bayshore News (@NewsBayshore) November 11, 2022