Regular readers of this space will know that today I do not post items related to K-12 distance, online, and/or blended learning.  Today is Remembrance Day.

While I’ve always had a deep appreciation for veterans – between my grandfather and my great uncle Rupert, and my first political boss Senator Jack Marshall – it wasn’t until approximately 25 years ago both my grandfather and I joined the Royal Canadian Legion.

As a veteran, he joined as an ordinary member, and as the grandson of a veteran, I joined as an associate member.  At that time there was a branch in Gambo, which was about an hour from where he lived, and my grandfather used to attend all of his branch meetings.  A couple of years later the Gambo branch closed, and all of its members would be transferred to Eastport – another 40 minutes further away from where my grandfather lived.  It was shortly thereafter that he stopped renewing his membership, with no physical branch to be active with.  Granted, he was still active in the community – attending each cadet annual inspection, the local school’s Remembrance Day assembly, and the community Remembrance Day at the cenotaph each and every year.

My involvement with the Royal Canadian Legion was slightly different.  I decided to join the local branch in Portugal Cove where my parents lived (as that was where I was residing at the time). A couple of years later I would transfer my membership to the Bonavista branch after I accepted a teaching position there.  However, it wasn’t until my last year in Bonavista that I became active in my local branch.  I suspect one of the reasons was because on Remembrance Day, which is generally the Legion‘s busiest time of year, I would always make the three hour drive over to be with my grandfather.  While there was a brief pause in this practice while I was completing my doctorate in Georgia, for most of the six years that I lived in Windsor, I would always return to be with my grandfather on Remembrance Day.  This also meant that I just maintained my membership in the Bonavista branch throughout the entire time I was in Georgia and Ontario, and simply was not active in any branch.

It wasn’t until two moves later, which was also six years after my grandfather had passed away, when I came to the San Francisco Bay area and discovered that there was a local branch of the Royal Canadian Legion  that I became actively involved  to honor the memory of my grandfather.  Since coming to California I have held a number of leadership roles in our local branch (i.e., Branch 25 – San Francisco), as well as within the western US international zone.  As the Poppy Chair for our branch, over the past six years we have distributed more than 5000 poppies to Canadians throughout the Bay Area, and really across the entire United States – as I frequently get emails from ex-pats in all corners of the country that are looking for poppies to wear for Remembrance Day.

Throughout the pandemic, I coordinated and created a number of virtual services to mark memorial day, commemoration day, and remembrance day (both for the branch and for my university and their Veterans Day services) – in fact even as the pandemic has waned, our branch has continued to stream our services for those who are unable to join us in person.

As I reflect on these efforts throughout the day, I think of my grandfather often.  All of these activities have been undertaken to honor my grandfather while he was alive, and his memory now that he has passed.