Remembrance Sunday 2008

Today is Remembrance Sunday throughout the British Commonwealth, past and present. Tuesday is the 90th anniversary of the llth hour of the llth day of the llth month, l9l8, or the end of the Great War. I'm not sure how many people out there have been to the western front, but what you see below is a highlight: The Canadian National Memorial at Vimy Ridge, near Arras in France, has stood for 62 years now as a tribute to the Canadian dead and missing in the Great War. You see above a figure called "Canada Mourning;" in her ineffable sadness, she is keeping watch over the body of a symbolic Canadian casualty below. Beyond her unfold the flatlands surrounding this high ground, so that you can get an idea of the dimensions of the task the Canadian soldiers faced in trying to dislodge German forces from there in the middle part of the Great War. It's just a small part of the war that cost the lives of nine million people worldwide and collapsed four empires.