The other day Brooksie posted a review of Christie Blatchford's book Fifteen Days over at The Torch and it included this passage:

The other notable chapter was the polar opposite to me: the one story that really sums up what this book is about, that distills the essence of this fine brotherhood that fought in Afghanistan. It follows small groups of soldiers as they travel to the homes of their fallen comrades to remember them on November 11th. Blatchford conveys the raw emotion of these very personal acts of remembrance with an accuracy that leaves the reader profoundly moved. One line in particular stands out, one line that had me laughing through the tears:

"So we did what you do in Newfoundland. We pretended everything was okay, had some laughs, drank lots of booze, then we all cried together. Then we laughed some more at what a bunch of pansies we were." - Willy Macdonald, on Remembrance Day in Burgeo, Vaughan Ingram's hometown...

There was something about that "everything was okay" that got me thinking. There must have been a time when being a soldier or sailor was not necessarily a higher risk proposition than being a fisherman off Newfoundland...or a miner or lumberman for that matter. I was reminded of it again by the first CBC show I have watched in its entirety for a few years, the episode of "Who Do You Think You Are" on Maj. Gen Lewis MacKenzie which was such an interesting tracing of the path of one family of Nova Scotia Empire Loyalists who settled in Queens County that I hardly noticed Albert Schultz's incredibly irritating narration. In once scene MacKenzie, the man who led the opening up of Sarejevo's airport, pauses over the account of his forefather's death - along with all hands - on fishing schooner. Quite the thing.