There were the dignitaries, the politicians, the representatives of the executive branch, the veterans with their sad, rheumy eyes and thousands of spectators come to pay their respects on this Remembrance Day, 11/11/12 under overcast skies after a night of full-throng rain.  It was cold, that much was evident by the manner in which everyone was bundled against the chill wind and the dank November day.  Another hour and the proceedings would have taken place in sunshine.

There was the traditional 21-gun salute, as the cannon went off behind and above the ceremony before the war memorial, and there were fly-bys, the sound of the planes' ascent and by-pass roaring into the atmosphere above the solemn crowd below.  The prime minister was not present this day; in his place stood the Senate's majority leader.  He attended a like ceremony on a visit abroad, in Hong Kong before a memorial to the hundreds of Canadians who fell in that theatre of war. 

And the governor general, wearing his naval uniform of younger days and war disposition was there to render his regal presence to the occasion, representing the British monarchy, with Canada part of the Commonwealth nations where such ceremonies would be repeated through geographies far from this one.

It was a colourful spectacle, as it always is, nuanced with the children's choir singing hymns to the fallen and the human condition under an omniscient presence.  A lone bagpiper, furiously blowing that beast of an instrument, morosely, sadly that sound that many detest and many others honour.  The last post was heard, and the laying of the wreaths in memory of the military war dead commemorated for theirs was the ultimate sacrifice.

In marching to war to defend the values of liberty and freedom from an oppressive tyranny that sought to impose its own values on the greater world community this is the expression of appreciation of ordinary citizens and former military, and the body politic.

The gravity of this memorializing should never take away from the reality of the deaths of countless millions of civilians who died throughout the course of those wars that we remember.  The men, women and children, the elderly and the young, the able-bodied and the chronically disabled, for whom the destructive path of war spelled misery and death in their forced sacrifice to the flawed condition of human nature.