Dear editor:
I am an OAC student at Fort Frances High School and last week I was told, after asking a number of people, that there would not be a Remembrance Day assembly held at the school this year.
I was given several reasons for this, the first being that Nov. 11 fell on a Saturday so we would not be in school and an assembly would not be convenient.
Personally, I do not celebrate Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or any other holiday directly on that day every year. It is not the day that we celebrate but the ideology of the holiday and what it represents to all of us.
Are we going to forget what thousands of men and women did for us because the day falls on a Saturday? This does not seem right to me.
Remembrance Day is not a holiday–it is a day we do not celebrate. It is a day we have set aside to give thanks to, and grieve for, the men and women who sacrificed so much so we can be free.
The second reason I was given for the absence of a Remembrance Day assembly is that teachers who have done the assembly in the past do not feel they should do it this year. They are tired and do not have the energy to help with the assembly.
I am assuming, with a reasonable hypothesis, that this means they feel that Remembrance Day falls under the extra-curricular activity heading.
I am not going to go into government issues because I do not know the facts, and I have been told so many different things by different people that I do not know what to believe. I have my own opinions about the situation but they do not matter because this is not about opinions.
All I now for sure is that my last year at Fort Frances High School is the worst I have ever experienced. I see such a lack of heart in everything that is done here and the lack of what is done. There is no spirit and no enthusiasm left in the halls of the building.
We may have a new school but I would take the old school back if the same atmosphere was still there. There was pride in the other school. The Remembrance Day issue is one example of this.
My uncle, who is in the Canadian armed forces, came down this summer and was telling me about his travels and being in Holland. The school children there know more about the Canadian troops, and what they did during the Second World War, than we do in Canada.
They are so thankful for the help Canadian soldiers gave in liberating Holland in 1945 that each child is assigned a grave of a fallen Canadian soldier that they take care of.
I do not know pride of this kind, I do not know respect of this kind. I want to know more about what they did and why we remember, and I want to know how so many seem to be forgetting as they years go by.
There is a line in a song by Pearl Jam that says, “He who forgets will be destined to remember.”
Signed,
Amanda Galusha
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
