In a few weeks Canadians from coast to coast will gather at their community cenotaphs to pay tribute to those who have given their lives on foreign battlefields so that the rest of us may live free.
Unfortunately, many Canadians either don't know or are indifferent to what our forefathers did nearly seven decades ago when the threat the world faced from fascism and oppression was an everyday fact of life.
An organization is visiting high schools across northern Nova Scotia urging young people to remember the painful sacrifice thousands of young Canadians made, not just in two world wars, but in Korea, on numerous peacekeeping missions and most recently in Afghanistan.
At the same time, the organization Remembering Canada's Heroes (We Will Remember Them) is urging Nova Scotians to write their MLAs and Education Minister Ramona Jennex to urge government to change high school curriculum so young people learn what took place in the last century.
History is not a compulsory class at the high school level, and the history that is taught deals mostly with the founding of the country and the role that our founding nations had in shaping this country.
While it is important to recognize the French, English and First Nations contributions to our formation as a nation, we must also teach our young people more about our recent past so they are not learning it from television and movies that tend to focus more on past U.S. achievements at the expense of their allies in this country and across the ocean.
Although there are a few who will say that teaching young people about wartime will only serve to glorify something that needs to be resisted, those who support changing the curriculum suggest those who ignore history tend to repeat it.
We are rapidly coming to a crossroads in our history. The number of Second World War veterans is rapidly dwindling and the day is coming soon when there will be no one left to tell their stories.
It's very unfortunate that young people in Holland and France know more about Canada's role in the Second World War than young Canadians do. Since they lived under occupation for several years before being liberated by Canadian and Allied troops they have developed a greater appreciation for what freedom means.
We, on the other hand, tend to think of those sacrifices only around Remembrance Day, when it's something we should be thinking about every day.
