How does Shawnigan mark Remembrance Day?
Remembrance Day is a momentous date across Canada where we honour all those who have fought and died in service of our country. It has special significance at Shawnigan, where we remember members of the School community who made the supreme sacrifice. Here, Head of School Richard D A (Larry) Lamont offers his own reflections on Remembrance Day.
What is Remembrance Day, and what is its significance here in Canada – and at Shawnigan?
For those unfamiliar with Remembrance Day – which officially takes place on November 11 each year – it is a memorial day, observed in some countries since the end of the First World War in 1918, to mark the end of hostilities and to remember those who died in the line of duty.
C.W. Lonsdale established Shawnigan in 1916 – a phoenix from the ashes of this turbulent period of history.
In Canada, November 11 focuses on remembrance for the men and women who have served, and continue to serve, this country during times of war, conflict, and peace – and those who have lost their lives in the service of peace, at home and abroad.
Shawnigan lost 45 alumni and staff in the Second World War.
There is a commemorative plaque in the Chapel that marks and honours them, and during the week prior to Remembrance Day each year, the School places 45 white crosses in the Quad to mark their sacrifice.
On Wednesday, November 15 (when the School community is back from November Break), we will hold our annual ceremony and the two Heads of School will read the Roll of Honour.
These members of the Shawnigan community served in the Canadian Air Force, Navy and Army and in many theatres of the Second World War – they were lost in the Atlantic, at Dunkirk and Normandy, in the Middle East, in North Africa, and over mainland Europe.
A few months ago, our Archivist spent some time investigating whether we needed to add a 46th name to our Roll of Honour.
Shawnigan alum Maurice Rochfort was declared killed in action in the North African Campaign in the Second World War but, after research, we discovered that he had been captured and held as a Prisoner of War and, after the end of the war, emigrated to Australia.
Please do let us know if you know of any Shawnigan alumni who lost their lives while serving in the Vietnam or Korean wars.
At this time of year, I always think of Wilfred Owen’s poem, “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young.” Owen takes the biblical story of Abraham and his son Isaac and converts it into the landscape of the First World War. The angels exhort Abraham to offer the “Ram of Pride” as a sacrifice, but diverging away from the Genesis storyline, “the old man would not so, but slew his son, / and half the seed of Europe, one by one.”
Chillingly and hauntingly, the final rhyming couplet captures arrogant militarism and emphasizes how mass slaughter is made up of individual deaths.
I invite you to read the poem and I will ask for it to be read in Chapel when we come back from November Break.
We will also sing I Vow to Thee, My Country.
It is always good to pause to think about the meaning of each hymn we sing in Chapel.
This is a hymn which captures love and loyalty to one’s homeland in the first verse – “the love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice” – but, in the second verse, it guides us (perhaps more importantly) to “another country,” the kingdom of heaven whose “fortress is a faithful heart.”
I rather like the final couplet about heaven:
“And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.”
For me, Remembrance Day is both a time to honour those men and women (including civilians) who have fallen in conflicts – on which ever side – and also to remind ourselves that we must strive constantly to find those “paths” of “peace.”
In a darkening world where so many lives have been lost and so many are suffering, displaced, and frightened, we can only hope that there can be an end to the senseless violence and loss of innocent lives.
Richard D A (Larry) Lamont has been Head of School at Shawnigan since 2018. He was previously Rektor (Head) of UWC Red Cross Nordic (Norway) from 2012 to 2018, and Head of the English Department and Head of Upper School at Marlborough College (England), spending a term in 2009 at UWC Waterford Kamhbala (Eswatini).
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Shawnigan Lake School is an independent co-educational boarding school for ages 13 –18 on Canada’s beautiful West Coast. Our diverse, interdisciplinary and innovative programming helps shape the next generation of global leaders.
