Earlier this year, some high school students showed Toronto Legionnaires they can remember veterans. Along the way, their art touched branch president, Debbie Moore. “I was blown away by the artwork. I could not believe how much time and effort they put into it,” Moore said.
David Koufis had never been to war, until Nov. 10 this year. “You do a lot of reflecting, thinking about what you’re doing and what you’re saying,” Koufis said. “Someone my age had to go through this and that makes you definitely think, reflect and have a totally renewed respect for the day.”
A former funeral director compares selling funeral services to selling cars. In 2010, the average cost of a funeral in Ontario was $5,500, not including the cost of the cemetery plot, flowers, or any other third-party disbursements. Eric Vandermeersch, who worked in a Toronto-area funeral home from the time he was 15, has initiated an online funeral service to spare families the pressure of dealing with cost issues when they’re most vulnerable.
Sgt. Joe (Joey) Montgomery was the first soldier from Scott County, in Scottsburg, Ind., to die in Iraq. His body was greeted at the airport by those who loved and knew him. There was no eulogy at Montgomery’s funeral. Perhaps he didn’t need one.
The journey began with a poster and a dare for Alexandra Hackett. “My friend and I went to town on a Saturday and there was a big, free event for the young people,” she said. “And that’s where we saw the poster.” It depicted a boy and girl serving in the army. With the words ‘Join the army. See the world,’ written across the picture.
In a little corner at 2060 Ellesmere Rd. sits a small cupcake specialty shop, the first of its kind in all of Scarborough.
Sydney Phillips’s war ended in the water half a world away. “I saw a water spout up behind me and said, ‘Uh oh,’” he said. “I was sitting in a lift behind two machine guns. (I) couldn’t get out. The plane must have broken in half behind me because the next thing I knew I pitched forward and I was floating in the Mediterranean.”
Lawrene Arsenault and her brother Bill McDonald were always close, but when McDonald went overseas with the Canadian Army in the Second World War, Arsenault really felt the distance. “We didn’t hear from him much,” Arsenault said. “The part of the army he was in was the artillery and he was on the front line all the time, so I never got to really write to him.
The Grade 10 students entered “the smelly little drama class,” as most at Francis Libermann Catholic High School call it. They took off their shoes, formed a circle, and waited for the national anthem. Following the singing of “O Canada” and morning announcements, Catherine Smith asked her students to think of the years encompassed by the First World War, between 1914 and 1918. Using their imaginations, they wrote letters as soldiers that had left home.
Imagine, “A school girl without a school, without the fun and excitement of school. A child without games, without friends, without fun, without birds, without nature, without fruits, without sweets. With just a little powdered milk, in short, a child, without a childhood. A wartime child.”
These lines are from the diary of Zlata Filipovic, describing her life as a 10-year-old girl living in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.