Editorial

November 5 2025

Why we remember

The truth is, we do forget. We forget names and faces and what they gave. We forget what it cost them. And, if we’re not careful, we start to forget why it mattered.

That’s why, each year in November, we stop. We gather in the cold. We pin on poppies, fall into silence, and stand – not because we love ceremony, or want to glorify war, but because memory, like freedom, demands practice. The names we once knew don’t roll off the tongue anymore. The stories that once filled family tables now sit in newspaper archives and carved granite.

But history – real history – is not a monument, not a museum piece. It’s a living thread, always at risk of being cut. The past doesn’t sit safely behind us. It runs under our feet. It holds up the ground we walk on. Understanding what was done then helps us understand who we are now and what we’re becoming.

The act of remembering lays the foundation of community service and public institutions. We remember to reinforce the hard stuff – values, responsibility, service – and those who shouldered the burden of defending these when it mattered most.

So let us remember and honour, clearly and deliberately, the veterans we acknowledge in this issue and, through them, the countless others and their families who sacrificed their years and lives protecting an idea, a cause, a homeland, community.

We remember Father Ronald Cameron MacGillivray, who went “over the top” seven times as a chaplain in the First World War, once leading a charge on a German battery with nothing but his cane. He returned to the battlefield in the Second World War, rising to become Principal Roman Catholic Chaplain of the Canadian Army. He died as he lived – in service to others, rooted in faith, remembered for bravery.

We remember Howard William Pelly, who enlisted in his mid-thirties, fought across the Italian front, and earned the Military Medal for single-handedly holding off a German counterattack while protecting a wounded officer. After the war, he helped raise more than 200 foster children. His heroism did not end in 1945. It simply changed form.

We honour Reg Russell, who joined the cadets at 12, served for more than 26 years in the Canadian Armed Forces, and now leads the Remembrance Day service in Sheet Harbour. A master warrant officer in the air force, he now works with students, sharing stories of duty, hardship, and courage through the Memory Project. “If you enjoy your freedom,” he tells them, “thank a vet.”

It’s a powerful point. We owe a debt of gratitude to those who fought. But we also owe them our promise that we won’t forget what they fought for.

Remembrance is not just for those who were lost. It’s for those who remain – the ones still willing to serve, still called to choose sacrifice over safety, duty over comfort, community over self. And it’s for the rest of us who must decide, every year, what kind of country we want to be.

That’s the question memory asks of us. Not simply will we remember, but what will we do with what we remember?