How Best to Show Our Respect

I am extremely supportive of Remembrance Day, but in this support, I am in the camp of people that do not wish it to become a statutory holiday in Ontario. While most of the reporting around this issue has mentioned the concern that it will be, one day, just another holiday, most of this reporting (including Minister Harris' interview with CBC Ottawa today) has addressed only the adult context. Yes, lots of adults would love to be able to commemorate this day by attending ceremonies, but where is this desire to participate fostered? It comes from the attention paid to this holiday within our schools. It comes from years of dedicated teachers, of annual assemblies, of learning to be quiet and to commit one's thoughts to reflection and gratitude for those two minutes every year.

If children are no longer able to experience this in the school setting, will this same desire to participate continue twenty or thirty years from now, as they become adults in the workforce? Certainly, those dedicated teachers can use the day before to prepare activities and share the importance of the day, but what happens on the actual day, if there is no school?

Some parents who share this passion will be able to take their children to community ceremonies, but will this become the norm? I think we would like to believe that youth throughout Ontario will seek out or be taken to community ceremonies that will instill them with gravitas year after year, until they themselves become parents and role models who continue to pass on the tradition of remembrance. However, I am deeply concerned that, instead, children will stay at home, that busy parents will choose not to take their children to a ceremony, and slowly the solemnity of this day will dissipate until it is, as many have already posited, just another holiday.

This Bill has been created out of respect and honour for everyone who fought to give us such sought-after freedom, but I feel that respect and honour are demonstrated not through holiday designation but from teaching our youth. As with language, religion, culture and identity, our ideologies are fostered and rooted in our youth, and it is youth that should be considered in this issue.