Remembrance Day display in front of Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School. (rdnewsNOW/Alessia Proietti)

By Alessia Proietti

Honouring those who served

“Peace is possible”: Lindsay Thurber students put together multimedia Remembrance Day ceremony

Nov 7, 2023 | 4:53 PM

In a grand multimedia production, Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School’s (LTCHS) Remembrance Day Ceremony shared a hopeful message that peace is possible if both sides truly want it.

“Our hope was that focusing on peacekeeping, it kind of shows everybody that there is something that we need to strive for. There is the opportunity to have peace,” said Trina Penner, Grade 11 Learning Assistant Teacher and part of the ceremony’s steering committee.

“We do want students to realize that peace is possible and it can be possible in your own world, family, school, community and, obviously, in other areas of the world so if you see that as a possibility then I think we’re better off in the world.”

Held in their gymnasium on Tuesday, the entire school of roughly 1,800 students gathered to honour those who served in World War I and II, with the theme of “The Faces of Peace”.

Full gymnasium at Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive high School for the remembrance Day ceremony on Tuesday. (rdnewsNOW/Alessia Proietti)

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Penner said the ceremonies have been an annual tradition since before she started working for the school in 1997. She believes what makes their ceremonies unique is that they do not have a Master of Ceremonies; rather, slides and student participation guide the presentation forward, which is important since many veterans are no longer alive.

The ceremony included Red Deer Air, Sea, and Army Cadets, student poetry readings, performances by the LTCHS Chamber Choir & Symphonic Band, an artwork slideshow, and laying of wreaths.

A video interview was put together with Major Bryce Simpson, a member of the Lord Strathcona’s Horse Royal Canadian Society, a Canadian military regiment based in Alberta.

He shared one of Canada’s peacekeeping missions that he’s worked on in the Sinai between Israel and Egypt. Explaining its history as the earliest armed peacekeeping operation by the United Nations (UN), it was deployed in 1956 to address the Suez Crisis between Israel and Egypt. After a series of wars, Israel ended with control of the Sinai, an Egyptian territory, in 1979. That year, they signed a peace treaty, returning the land to Egypt, with the condition of having a national peacekeeping force in the area to monitor the military presences of each side and foster communication between the two.

“When both sides want it to work, peacekeeping can be very effective and indeed is very important. When one or both sides are less keen on actually maintaining the peace, peacekeeping can be counter productive or far more difficult for the peacekeeping force,” he said, adding the force’s job is to be maintain objective neutrality.

He added that as countries do not go to war with each other as often as they did, the challenge today for peacekeeping is civil war since s it remains within one country.

Further videos described the Canadian military’s efforts with the UN to maintain peace worldwide, with over 125,000 Canadians participating in missions and 130 having lost their lives.

The ceremony included an explanation of LTCHS’ Memorial Wall, dedicated to the various Red Deer students at the school who fought in WWI and II.

Red Deer Air, Sea, and Army Cadets on stage at the Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School Remembrance Day ceremony while the school’s Chamber Choir sings. (rdnewsNOW/Alessia Proietti)

“That rich history is what we draw from, and we want to bring that forward into the future and make something so that our youth now realize not only that they’re standing on ground that these soldiers used to attend as students but also that the ground that we stand on is free for a reason,” said Penner.

She says with LTCHS’ French immersion program, students on exchange with their sister school in Mulhouse get to visit the battlefields and gravesites where Canadian soldiers were laid to rest in France.

She adds that their school reflects the world around them, with newly immigrated, refugee, and exchange students from various countries. She says feedback from these students has been positive around their Remembrance Day ceremony.

(rdnewsNOW/Alessia Proietti)

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