efore my great-uncle died (he was 96 years old), I spent a day with him and my great-aunt when I was living in Victoria.
I was fortunate enough to see them frequently, but I hadn't seen them recently, so we spent all one Canada Day together and we did the Canada Day quiz from the Globe and Mail.We were competing and I lost, badly.
Before we started the quiz I thought that I would win because I am both a history buff and a trivia junkie and I thought that my expansive knowledge of inane Canadian trivia would secure my victory.
There were two things that I didn't take into consideration before we started the quiz: 1) if you have been alive for nearly 100 years you will slaughter someone who had only seen a mere two and a half decades and 2) there were two of them.
The facts that I memorized in high school and university about the Great Wars and the Depression, my great aunt and uncle lived through and remembered.Even though my uncle was mostly deaf and my aunt was mostly blind, they were a formidable team when it came to trouncing their uppity great-niece in a trivia competition.
I miss them, terribly.
I am thinking of this day because Wednesday is Remembrance Day and my great uncle fought in the Second World War. On our Canada Day competition day, one of the questions was about the war. I looked at my uncle and suddenly remembered something: "Weren't you in the war?"
I asked, stupidly. He laughed and said, "Yes."
So at the age of 25 I learned that my great-uncle and my grandfather were both veterans of the Second World War,
From what I remember, they were both stationed up in Alaska and when I asked him what it was like, he said: "Cold."
I feel fortunate that even though I didn't take advantage of asking more questions about that time in his life that I still had a relationship with him and was able to talk to him about it. My children won't meet anyone who is still alive from the Second World War. In my lifetime, the last of the survivors of the war will be gone.
Remembrance Day is a vitally important day for Canadians to observe and to maintain the traditions of telling stories and remembering the wars and the people who have given their lives in service to our country.
Remember that it's not just a day off work and please, if you have people in your life that have been around since the turn of the century, ask them what it was like. Make the connection while we still have the opportunity to do so.
