OTTAWA —
Canadians will return to cenotaphs and monuments throughout a lot of the nation on Thursday morning to recollect and pay their respects to those that fought and died in service of Canada.
This yr’s Remembrance Day ceremonies will stand in stark distinction to final yr, when organizers discouraged folks from attending in individual due to the second wave of COVID-19.
Royal Canadian Legion spokeswoman Nujma Bond is anticipating a return to some semblance of normalcy, together with on the Nationwide Battle Memorial in Ottawa, the place individuals are being welcomed to attend.
Some restrictions and modifications will nonetheless stay in place as COVID-19 continues to pose a risk, Bond stated, with masks and bodily distancing necessities in place for anybody planning to attend ceremonies.
The Legion has additionally once more cancelled the standard veterans’ parade in Ottawa, which has prior to now seen aged veterans from the Second World Battle and Korea march alongside counterparts from more moderen conflicts and operations.
“However there shall be an space for veterans who want to attend the ceremony to face and sit close to the Nationwide Battle Memorial,” Bond stated.
Some Legion branches throughout the nation can even be once more forgoing in-person occasions due to the pandemic and as an alternative asking folks to observe their native ceremony on TV or on-line, she added, which is an choice for the nationwide ceremony as nicely.
There had been questions forward of this yr’s occasion round whether or not the federal government would preserve flags at half-mast, as that they had been since Might in reminiscence of Indigenous kids who died attending residential faculties.
However the authorities opted on Sunday to lift the flags again as much as their full peak earlier than decreasing them once more on Monday in honour of Indigenous Veterans Day, and they are going to be lowered once more on Thursday.
Apart from the masks and bodily distancing necessities and the choice to not have a veterans’ parade, Bond stated this yr’s nationwide ceremony will embrace most of the components that Canadians have come to know over the many years.
That features a studying of the Act of Remembrance in English, French and an Indigenous language, which Bond stated this yr would be the Metis language of Michif.
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Nov. 11, 2021.
