Commentary, Opinion

Remembering them

October 15, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

I’m not sure how many World War II veterans are still with us across the country.

In 2025, it was reported that there were around 3,691 Canadian veterans of the war still with us.

The D-Day Invasion of Europe happened in 1944 – 82 years ago, meaning those remaining veterans are almost certainly all centenarians.

When I was a kid, I recall survivors of the First World War coming to our school and speaking of their experiences in the trenches.

Incredibly, the last surviving combat veteran of the Canadian Expeditionary Force of World War I passed away in 2005 at the age of 106.

With Remembrance Day coming up, it is important to remember the sacrifice so many people made when they answered the call to duty.

Recently, I visited a cenotaph in what is still a small village of only a couple of hundred people. There are over 20 names of soldiers who died on the battlefields of World War One etched in the granite, and another full list of casualties from the Second World War.

This was a hamlet where every single family would have been affected by a war death in some way.

There are plenty of cenotaphs like it across the country.

After the war years, soldiers returned to civilian life, married, raised families, and held various jobs.

Many people who had fathers and grandfathers who fought in the war will tell you that they never spoke of their war experience. It was something they kept to themselves.

Maybe it was the horror of experiencing war firsthand, seeing death and destruction and entire cities laid waste, that they just wanted to forget.

Several years ago, I attended an event at the Museum of Dufferin. World War II veterans living in the area were contacted and paired up with local high school students who conducted interviews with the veterans about their war experience.

At the time, there were still quite a few veterans living locally. Many of them agreed to do the interviews to record their experiences in the history books.

I had the opportunity to sit down and speak to one of the veterans, and he told me his wartime story.

I was fascinated to learn he had been part of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944. Speaking to him was like being part of an historic event.

He was assigned to a landing craft during the invasion on Omaha Beach – a beach where American soldiers landed. He explained that while the American Navy had a lot of big ships, they lacked landing craft, so Canadian soldiers were assigned the task of taking them to shore.

The landing craft approached the beach in a V-pattern. They were under strict orders not to break formation for any reason. Even if the craft beside them was hit, they couldn’t slow or stop to help survivors. It was full steam ahead because any delay would mean they would become a sitting duck target.

The situation got very tense when the battleships started firing their shells at the beach. He described hearing the sound of huge naval artillery shells screaming overhead.

The German defences responded and, as he described it, “we had shells flying both ways over our heads.”

The men in those landing craft didn’t panic; they didn’t break formation. They did their job and successfully landed those soldiers on shore.

As Remembrance Day approaches, it is important to remember those who both fought and died during these conflicts.

They were fighting to preserve our way of life, and the way of life we currently enjoy.

These sacrifices should be taught in schools, and children should be made aware of the fact that a generation stood up when it was necessary, and they now have the freedoms those soldiers fought for.

Newcomers to our country should also attend Remembrance Day ceremonies. It is those sacrifices that helped build this nation that newcomers still want to come to, and they should honour our past.

Now more than ever, we must remember the past as we face challenges, both foreign and domestic, from people who want to destroy our way of life.

Attending a Remembrance Day ceremony only takes an hour. That’s one hour out of an entire year, so it’s not a big deal.

Make the effort and visit your local cenotaph on Nov. 11, and honour those whose names are forever written in stone and who did not live to share the prosperity we all enjoy.

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