Making history then and now

Tish MacDonald gives her students - bound for Vimy next year - last minute instructions for their Sam Sharpe Gala. April 15, 2016.
Tish MacDonald gives her students – bound for Vimy next year – last minute instructions for their Sam Sharpe Gala. April 15, 2016.

Sometimes, achievement comes in very small packages. And sometimes it arrives when you least expect it. In this case, a friend of mine, a teacher who’s been working diligently to pull together a major event this weekend, was in the middle of something else. Suddenly, one of her students interrupted to show her his latest piece of work.

“He was completely covered in sawdust,” my teacher friend Tish MacDonald said, “and he showed me this wooden silhouette he’d been working on. It was incredible.”

The silhouette is the outline of a soldier, a First World War Canadian soldier, whose figure will join the décor and displays that, in a few days, will transform the local high school in Uxbridge, Ont., into the site of “The Samuel S. Sharpe Gala” fundraiser. (more…)

Value of votes

Bruce Evans volunteered to restore freedoms in Europe – such as the freedom to vote.

A close veteran friend of mine died this week. Bruce Evans, winner of the Governor General’s Caring Canadian Award, served in the Second World War with the 1st Hussars tank regiment. He landed in Normandy and was wounded on D-Day 1944; but he rejoined the 6th Armoured Regiment in time to help liberate Holland in 1944-45. His reason for serving was simple.

“It wasn’t patriotism that drove us,” Evans said. “Our job was to … liberate Europe,” and he was always mindful of the regiment’s motto, “today not tomorrow.”

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