Rideau Hall, Tuesday, November 11, 2008

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Rideau Hall today, a day we set aside to make moving and necessary efforts to remember.

The duty of memory is an important one.

Yesterday, I attended the premiere of a deeply moving film, Front Lines / Entre les lignes, an NFB production by filmmaker Claude Guilmain.

This film helps us to understand the essence of that unspeakable, inconceivable, profoundly human and horribly inhuman part of war, as told through letters written by our soldiers and nurses.

We will hear a few excerpts from these letters a little later.

One of those soldiers is my predecessor, the Right Honourable Georges Vanier, who returned from the First World War with his right leg amputated but more convinced than ever of the need to stand up to barbarism in all forms.

So many young people have chosen to make unimaginable sacrifices in the name of justice and freedom.

How can we ever repay the debt we owe them, if not by remembering them, as we do each and every year on this date?

How can we ever thank them, if not by pledging to defend the same values they fought and risked their lives for?

“It came with a price, this thing we hold close

Of everything else, peace cost us the most.”

Yes, Andrea Murray, as you describe so eloquently in your poem, which took first place in the Literary and Poster Contest, we paid a steep price to rebuild peace during one of the bloodiest centuries in our history.

Exactly 90 years ago today, the Allied forces and their enemies signed an armistice treaty.

The whole world thought it had seen the last of war.

But there have been others, just as deadly.

Even now, Canada is once again faced with the harsh and painful reality of an armed conflict.

Our soldiers are again leaving their parents, children, loves and friends behind to help others struggling under the yoke of violence, barbarism and oppression.

We will not forget them on this Remembrance Day.

We will also think of their families, who not only support them, but also deeply respect their choice and their commitment, no matter what, even if the worst should happen.

Mrs. Stachnik, we met on the tarmac, at the military base in Trenton, joined by other grieving families.

I wanted to be there, to stand beside you and all those who had lost a loved one in Afghanistan, and I thank you for allowing me to share that moment with you.

Mrs. Stachnik, your son Shane was a sergeant from 2 Combat Engineer Regiment.

He was an experienced soldier, having already gone on a number of missions, including two in Bosnia and one in Sri Lanka after the devastating tsunami.

Yes, he helped people whose lives had been devastated by war and natural disasters.

He was a generous soul.

He supported the efforts being made to restore stability and security in Afghanistan.

He was very courageous.

He came to the rescue of families on the other side of the world that were deprived of their most basic rights.

He was a humanist.

You have every reason to be proud of him and of what he did through his commitment and conviction.

Mrs. Stachnik, Canadians all across the country share the pride you have for your son.

They also mourn with you, as they do with all those whose son, daughter, spouse, daddy or mommy did not return from a mission.

We will never forget the men and women who paid for freedom with their lives; nor will we forget those who mourned them and those who mourn them still.

That is a promise.

Our promise of hope.