Remembrance Day: The Glory of Being Loved

Today on Remembrance Day, I wanted to share some thoughts from my late father, Dr. Michael Manley-Casimir, who sadly passed away in June 2025.  In a file folder of speeches he gave annually on Remembrance Day, I found one where he reflects on a piece of writing I did for a school assignment. I thought it fitting to share this speech here today:

Remembrance Day is a special day of celebration and recommitment to the cause of peace.  It is a day of celebration – the celebration of the end of the World War I (and of all subsequent wars that have ended), and the celebration of peace. By seeing Remembrance Day as a day of celebration, we affirm in our lives the gift given to us by those who died: the gift of living our lives in peace and freedom, and the gift of a new opportunity to make peace in the world.

My daughter Rachel captured the essence of this gift in a short paragraph she wrote at school at age 8:

The Glory of Being Loved

Some people are not aware that the people that went to war gave their lives for us. They died for our freedom. We are loved and they were loved and now they lie in Flanders Field.

As I read these simple words, I began to understand the enormous power they contained.  I also appreciated the scope of my daughter’s understanding of the significance of the sacrifice of those who fought and died to enable us to enjoy the freedoms we have today here in Canada.

So I ask you to come with me down the hard, boulder-strewn, dangerous road to peace. It is a challenge to affirm peace in our lives, and to directly confront the forces of war: dictatorship and oppression, murder and disappearance, nuclear armaments and militarism, racism and intolerance, selfishness and discrimination. Any action we take is political – that is, we must act deliberately to change existing situations wherever we confront them. This action may be difficult.

Here are some ideas on how we can do this in our everyday lives:

• • • support organizations that are working internationally to promote peace and fight oppression, like Amnesty International, and opposing nuclear armament, like Ploughshares for Peace;
    • take part in public demonstrations to oppose war and support peace; and
    • promote public education for peace.

As we consider how we can honour those who died for our freedoms on this Remembrance Day, I want to encourage each of us to ask ourselves several important questions:

Is there more that I can do to promote justice and peace in the world?

Is there more I can do to honour those who sacrificed their lives for our freedoms?

And finally, is there more that I can do to work for safety and security of all children everywhere?

Today, let us remember and honour those who died to secure our freedoms and let’s work together so that everyone understands the glory of being loved.

We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Photo by chris robert on Unsplash

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