A Remembrance Day ceremony is neither the time nor the place for a public protest. It’s certainly not an occasion to call in a death threat and it doesn’t call for vandalism.
How sad it was when Thursday, Nov. 11, all of these things happened at ceremonies across the province. Anti-vaxxers disrupted a service in Kelowna, someone threatened that “somebody might get killed” if the United Nations flag were to be flown at a ceremony in Lake Country, while someone scrawled pro-vaccine graffiti on a war memorial in Cranbrook.
It bears stressing here that, if the purpose of a good editorial is to frame a societal issue and then point to solutions, both would seem difficult here. Difficult, but not impossible.
At stake is the meaning of Remembrance Day itself. The slogan “Lest We Forget” must forever remind us that our freedoms haven’t come for free. We cannot abide it when people choose to ignore that those freedoms carry certain obligations, not the least of which are tact and respect.
We’re called every Nov. 11 to reflect on these truths. We wear poppies in memory of those who fought and died to preserve our way of life. And we do it because these veterans sacrificed so much to fight tyranny abroad.
To subvert that day to 21st-century causes here at home is to look past their sacrifices so that people can look to their own gripes.
Instead, we would do well to look to the elders in our community for whom Remembrance Day hasn’t lost its meaning, much less its purpose.
At the very least, we’ve got to look at why they never picketed at a Remembrance Day ceremony — ever.
— Boundary Creek Times