Hundreds gather in Montreal to mark Remembrance Day

Hundreds of people gathered in downtown Montreal on Monday to mark Remembrance Day and honour Canadians who sacrificed their lives in the great wars and beyond.

Veteran Susan Young was thinking of her great uncle who was killed by a sniper during the First World War.

“He died at the first wave of the battle of the Somme, giving his water canteen to one of his injured soldiers,” Young said in an interview.

For veteran Martine Roy, who is the President of the LGBT Purge Fund, looking to the past brings up other kinds of pain.

“1970 to 1992, there was a law, and all federal agencies that were saying, ‘If you're homosexual, you're a sexual deviant, and you have to be disposed.’ So, we were getting arrested and interrogated and sent to a psychiatrist and then kicked out. So that's what happened to me in 1984,” Roy recounted.

The Canadian government apologized in 2017 for the "LGTB Purge" that persecuted thousands in the military. Roy says being at the ceremony is part of reconciliation and healing.

“So, we lay a wreath today that says the 2SLGBTQ community because we believe that many of us served in all the wars and still serving today,” she said.

Remembering for some is also about teaching future generations.

Tom Irvine served 23 years in the Canadian Armed Forces and worries young people don't know enough about Canada's military history.

“We lost soldiers in Afghanistan. That's current, but nobody thinks about it. It's a war far away, and they don't know anything about it,” Irvine said.

But at a ceremony to mark the past, some are looking to the future. City Councillor Sterling Downey recently joined a long family tradition of military service.

He's enlisted in The Black Watch taking part in basic training on weekends.

“I'm very lucky at my age. My 51 is not my father's 51. And that's it. You know, I've got the life experience, the mental resilience to get through it. So, it's a different experience for somebody my age then I'm sure it would be for somebody who's 20 or 16,” Downey said.

Though few at the ceremony were likely old enough to have lived through a great war, they are determined to keep the memory of those who served alive.

“They sign on the dotted line with their lives. For us to be free today and without them, we wouldn't have the lives we have today,” Young said.