Remembering

Judging by the expressions of the onlookers, the visitor to a London, Ontario, Remembrance Day ceremony, probably in 1939, was not especially welcome.

The Canadian Legion was keen to offer advice and assistance to all demobilized Canadians at the end of the Second World War.

Veterans groups used every means possible, including pool betting on horse racing, to raise money for the benefit of ex-soldiers and their dependants.

The 1938 Canadian Corps reunion featured a full-size replica of a typical French village in which soldiers could relive the good times of the First World War.

In 1944, the service at Vancouver's Cenotaph was as much about the war then in progress as it was about the war of the previous generation.

Founded in 1920, the Ypres League was a comrades and commemoration organization that brought together ex-soldiers who had served in the Ypres Salient during the First World War.

After the First World War, Fort Anne in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, featured an extensive display of wartime artifacts, including a German 105mm field gun that had been captured by Canadian units.

Ron Laidlaw, longtime resident of London, Ontario, was a war photographer with the RCAF during the Second World War. He was, allegedly, the first Allied photographer to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and among the first to enter the newly liberated city of Paris. He brought back with him a collection of Nazi artifacts and Adolf Hitler collector cards, as well as official photos that he took in England, France, Holland, and Germany.

Although this service was held after the Second World War, its content and symbols were redolent of the First.

Joseph Reed Sams enlisted in 1943 and fought with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry. While he was at the front, his family kept a scrapbook of newspaper articles concerning the major battles in which they believed he had fought. Throughout the scrapbook are items that are more personal, such as the telegram informing the family that Sams had been wounded. Other interesting items, added after he had returned home are a Nazi badge, Sams' campaign ribbon, and a fifty-Reichsmark bill.