Every year as November 11 approaches thoughts turn to Remembrance Day.
Each year there are fewer and fewer veterans attending events, the decades passing having seen most pass away.
But the day remains as important today as it ever has.
It may even be more important in the sense as veterans die it falls to those of us far removed from a battlefield in Europe, or Korea to carry the banner of remembrance high.
It is all too easy to take for granted just what we have here in Canada.
There was a time the freedoms we enjoy-the freedom to vote in elections like we do, the freedom to write and read an editorial like this without fear of retribution should the opinion be different from those in power-were not assured.
There was a time two great wars threatened the rights and freedoms we hold so dear.
The threat was great enough for a generation to take up arms twice in a matter of less than a quarter of a century to protect what we should hold dearest.
Many would give the ultimate sacrifice dying in fields and trenches, dikes and streets in countries far from their own homes.
They fought bravely, died bravely, to help make Canada what it is today. They kept our freedoms intact by their sacrifice.
Young men and women continue to do that as members of our Armed Forces.
They have been there as peacekeepers when called upon.
They have given the sacrifices again in Afghanistan holding true to the ideals we still hold dear in Canada.
And so Sunday we should all take the time to attend the Remembrance Day ceremonies to be held in communities across this country.
Here in Yorkton the ceremony will be held at the Farrell Agencies Arena, and the place should be packed to the rafters as each and every one of us owes so much to those the day remembers.
The weather may not be perfect.
And attending the ceremony may mean rising earlier than normal on a Sunday off.
But such things are such small efforts compared to what our soldiers faced, sleeping in rat-infested trenches in the First World War, and slogging through the dikes of the Netherlands to liberate that country from Nazi rule in the Second World War.
So please Yorkton, take the time Sunday to remember, to pay tribute, to thank our veterans for what they have meant to our country.
