Thurber Remembrance Day ceremony an emotional event once again

Dignitaries, families and thousands of students gathered at Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School Tuesday for another emotional and tremendously well done Remembrance Day ceremony.

The theme of this year’s event was the Battle of Passchendaele, fought 100 years ago this week. Nearly 16,000 Canadians were killed or wounded during the battle, historically described as ‘Hell on Earth.’

“These young soldiers were worried about surviving to see day’s end,” said Carolyn Smith, one of two students who spoke about their recent French exchange experience.

Smith said that standing at the Vimy memorial last year, she’d never felt so small, adding no words could adequately describe the pride she felt that day.

Ceremony live-stream 

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Among other things, the ceremony also featured this year’s Thurber Remembrance Day poetry contest winner Shelby Marler, who read her poem entitled ‘Tranquil’s Toll.’ 

Marler, a grade 12 student, says her poem was written in memory of her great-great-Uncle Donald Marler, who flew in WWII as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force. The poem can be read in full here.

On her generation and how it should remember WWI and WWII 100 years on, Marler said, “These ceremonies are the least that we can do. Until we step into their shoes, we have no idea what it would’ve been like in their final days, their final hours fighting for their country and the values and beliefs they loved the most. My generation should think of these soldiers as nothing less than heroes.”

Marler says her poem draws on the ideals of selflessness and sacrifice and the nightmarish experience her uncle must have gone through in the cockpit of his Halifax Bomber.

“It makes me very sad to think he could have lived a full life, could’ve gotten married and had kids like the rest of his siblings, but he didn’t,” she said. “He chose to serve in the Royal Canadian Air Force and instead of living the comfortable life, he chose to live the hard one. That, I am forever thankful for.”

Donald Marler was deployed overseas on New Year’s Day 1942. On September 7, he wrote his parents telling of the warm welcome he had received in Germany.

“These raids are not nearly as dangerous as I had anticipated. In fact I’m not worried at all (much),” he penned.

Marler, born November 11, 1918, went missing November 9, 1942. His gravestone is now at Texel General Cemetery in the Netherlands with 166 other Commonwealth graves.