Remembrance Day

he Colours of Remembrance: The Story Behind the Four Poppies

© Robin Kers. This is original content. Please do not repost without attribution.

Preface 

While researching for my other article on Remembrance Day, which focuses on Canadian contribution, I came across something I hadn’t fully appreciated — that the poppy, long a symbol of sacrifice, has taken on new colours and meanings over time. 

What began as a single red bloom from the battlefields of Flanders has grown into a spectrum of remembrance: red for sacrifice, white for peace, black for overlooked service, and purple for the animals who served beside us.

TORONTO ON

I've never forgotten memorizing this in school although the real meaning probably eluded me at the time.

In Flanders Fields read by Leonard Cohen

2023 it was 20C or 68F. This was taken by me in 2019 at the Remembrance Day ceremonies. 

TORONTO ON

Found this World War I memorial outside Little Trinity Anglican Church.

At City Hall, Toronto.

This large, bronze monument, called Peace Through Valour, commemorates the more than 93,000 Canadian soldiers who took part in the Italian campaign of the Second World War. The work was created by internationally known Canadian artist Ken Lum.

ST. THOMAS ON

DIEPPE MEMORIAL HAMILTON ON

NORMANDY FRANCE

                     SHRINE OF REMEMBRANCE MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA

BERLIN WALL GERMANY

MEMORIAL KRISTALLNACHT BUDAPEST HUNGARY

PRAGUE CZECH REPUBLIC

TEREZIN WAR CAMP GERMANY

Kanchanaburi War Cemetery THAILAND

KOREAN WAR MEMORIAL - WASHINGTON DC

PEARL HARBOR HONOLULU HI

SINGAPORE

ANZAC DAY

April 25 is ANZAC Day 

Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand that broadly commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders "who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations" and "the contribution and suffering of all those who have served". Wikipedia

Waltzing Matilda - John Williamson

March 2015 - Melbourne Australia


We were lucky to have met some Aussies on a Mekong River cruise and they graciously showed us around their home city of Melbourne in March. The Shrine of Remembrance was a highlight and I would love to spend more time there.

ANZAC Day, originally a commemoration of the landing of Australian and New Zealand forces at Gallipoli on the 25th April 1915, has grown to become perhaps the most important national day in Australia.

ANZAC is an acronym and stands for Australian New Zealand Army Corps, the name given to the body of troops raised by the two countries to aid the British Empire in the Great War. Throughout the war Australian and New Zealand troops, or 'Diggers' and 'Kiwis', would live, fight and die alongside each other creating a bond that still exists today between the two nations.

 ANZAC Day is also inextricably linked with the landings at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles Strait on the 25th April 1915. On this day ANZAC troops were committed to their first major action of the war, and though the campaign would ultimately prove a bloody failure and leave more than 8,000 Australians dead, it marked the beginning of the Anzac legend.

This legend was poignantly put into words by Sir William Deane, Governor-General of Australia on ANZAC Day 1999:

"Anzac is not merely about loss. It is about courage, and endurance, and duty, and love of country, and mateship, and good humour and the survival of a sense of self-worth and decency in the face of dreadful odds."

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