Another relatively miserable day weather-wise for Remembrance Day. The other week I wrote an email to John Donovan, the ex-US Marine Sgt. Major who has written a good piece about his thoughts on entering his first Veterans Day parade. I was writing about experiences and stories of members in our family not to say I am something I am not, which is military, but to note that you do not have to go very deep to figure out the connection you have to those we remember today:

• I grew up next to a Canadian air force base in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley a couple of hundred feet under the runway flight path of our sub-hunting Argus fleet; and then in Halifax, big navy town, seat of the British navy on the north Atlantic since 1749; I worked in Pembroke next to one of Canada's largest bases, CBF Petawawa, and now live in Kingston, an active and major army base as well as one of the frontier forts and naval bases that allowed Canada to come into and stay in existence.
• Dad was drafted into in the Berlin airlift era UK air force when he was 18.
• My uncle is a retired naval architect to US and Canadian navies.
• Both my parents experienced the blitz when kids, Dad's city being bombed for 3 days non-stop, the Nazis going after the shipyards of Greenock as well as the Canadian Navy which was headquartered there. My Mom watched dog-fights during picnics on the hills behind her village when she was six, the age of my oldest.
• Dad's cousin parachuted into Arnheim, the Netherlands, the story told in the movie "A Bridge Too Far".
• My Grandfather was the chief fitter for naval high-end steering gear in WWII, supplying many of the Canadina corvets. He had to sneak out of a few situations, like being on the wrong side of the North Sea in September 1939 and, later, almost got caught in Norway during the Nazi invasion there, stowing away on the last ship out.
• Grandpa earlier in life survived having three ships torpedoed out from under him in one day in WWI on the North Sea. My Grandmother built canvas bi-planes in a factory as a teen.
• My Great-uncle John, who I knew as a kid, was shell shocked from WWI trench life in France. His sister, Madge, who I also knew, was a head nurse at a front-line hospital in North Africa who, when told in her 80s that her legs had to be amputated due to an illness, reported that she said (in her thick Scots) to the doctor, "you do what you have to do, sonny, and don't worry - I've taken off more legs that you've seen."
• My Great-grandfather British Sgt. Major in India and, I am pretty sure, Aghanistan and Sudan. When he retired he went a little nuts, made his 10 daughters do drill every morning in the street in front of their Scottish home. My grannie referred to her Dad as "the Sgt. Major" her whole life or just "Tully", his last name.

This is just close family members. Dad's early congregations in Nova Scotia were full of WWI vets - now there are only eight in all of Canada - last year there were still ten. My elementary school janitor, Mr. Lundrigan, was a tank operator in North Africa in WWII. My high-school pal's Dad ran traffic in Amsterdam after the Netherlands were retaken. People I articled under included a WWII Canadian artillery man in the Netherlands, and watched both his neighbouring guns be destroyed by direct hits on the same night, and an Airborne Division Sgt. Major in Cyprus. I had clients in ten years ago who headed off to Bosnia. I read and correspond with my nieghbour Brian in Iraq.

I guess the point of all this is that were are remembering these guys, our family and the people who were just the folk in the town when you were a kid or would have been if they hadn't died.