Toronto Remembrance Day marks Legion’s 100th year

A large crowd gathered around the cenotaph outside Toronto’s Old City Hall on Wednesday as Mayor Olivia Chow used the city’s Remembrance Day ceremony to mark the Royal Canadian Legion’s 100th anniversary.

“The Legion shows us the city we can be. A city where no one carries the burden alone. A city where we take care of each other and stand up for each other,” Chow said, The Canadian Press reported.

After the bell atop Old City Hall struck 11, Rev. Levi Samson Beardy read the act of remembrance in Ojibwe and asked those who pray to pray for peace, so that future generations are spared the horrors of war.

About two kilometres away at Queen’s Park, Premier Doug Ford said this year’s ceremony was “especially poignant” after last month’s fire at CFB Wainwright in Alberta, and thanked Ontario health-care workers who were deployed to help care for the injured soldiers.

Brig.-Gen. Éric Landry, who held leadership roles in Afghanistan, noted that the war began 25 years ago. “We deployed 40,000 troops to Afghanistan over 15 years; 158 of us never came back,” he said. “Canada is worth defending.”

John Anderson, 79, a retired navy lieutenant from Cambridge, Ont., who served more than 40 years, laid a wreath at Old City Hall and said the day brings together those who served and those who still serve, “like one big brotherhood.”

Other ceremonies were held at Fort York National Historic Site and the Toronto Zoo. For the day’s closures, see our Remembrance Day guide. Our earlier reporting on the Wainwright fire includes how many injured soldiers needed ventilators.

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