These are just some of the thoughts and feelings people may have when they visit his beautiful bronze and granite tomb, especially this time of year when summer gives way to fall and when the leaves cut loose from the linden trees along Elgin Street and go scurrying across the stone promenade surrounding his gravesite. Fear comes when we think about the terrible set of circumstances that led to his death and to the deaths of thousands like him in a war that was supposed to end all wars. Hope comes when we think about the way in which The Royal Canadian Legion and other groups joined forces to bring him home and the way in which thousands of people have cared enough to remember his sacrifice. It is a powerful story, but it does not end with the funeral it endures so long as we–and generations to come–remember his symbolic sacrifice and pause long enough every day to think about the hope and the fear associated with preserving the kind of peace and freedom he fought and died for. He is Canada’s Unknown Soldier and the nation welcomed him home with tremendous dignity last May and laid him to rest in a tomb in front of the National War Memorial. He died on a muddy battlefield in France more than 80 years ago and because of that we know very little about him.
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