Saturday, November 11, 2017

Thanks You for Our Freedom

Update: Before I get into my intended post below, here is a photo of the Sea Cadets standing vigil at the Cenotaph last night. It was to be an all-nighter with half hour shifts. It was both cold and windy; the flags give testament to the wind. There were 94 lights in the strips that you can partly see in this photo, one for each Carleton Place soldier that has been lost in service.


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War is an awful thing. But sometimes it is necessary to take up arms against someone else who has perpetrated this awful thing. Brave men and women die in such terrible conflicts and deserve our memory and respect.

This year our town, Carleton Place, has hung banners along our main street, Bridge Street, honouring some of the fallen. What a wonderful idea!

This is what they look like, hanging on lampposts.



I photographed each banner save one, which I regret missing, and incorporated some of them into a collage. They couldn't all fit, so I chose the WWII ones to go into the project, but I still had to leave a few WWII banners out of the collage. I chose to tatter the image up a bit with wear marks in post production because it seemed fitting to me to emphasize the passing of time.

For the main photo, I chose what seemed to be the youngest man. 



Here are the ones that didn't fit in my collage but who most certainly deserve recognition.







8 comments:

Joanne Noragon said...

I saw a display of war veterans on a town's lamp standards once. I don't remember where. I do remember the sense of universal community as I passed them. Freedom isn't free.

Tabor said...

To remember them all is important.

Mage said...

These are powerful but wonderful too. Thank you. I'm making every effort to remember my long gone soldiers here.

Coloring Outside the Lines said...

Wow. I am humbled when I see something like this. Thanks for sharing.

Marie Smith said...

What a great community effort! Love it! Great job, AC.

Ginnie said...

What a lovely tribute, John. Such young and hopeful faces and the picture with the RCAF man and the WAAF wife broke my heart.

Mara said...

Because the Netherlands were neutral in WWI we don't remember our fallen, although I am sure there were some. Our national remembrance day is May 4th for WWII, even though our WWII only really ended in August (the war in the East).

I think it's important to remember and even though many of the survivors are no longer with us, there are new conflicts every day it seems and good people are killed in those conflicts as well.

Beatrice P. Boyd said...

There is an annual Veterans Day parade here in Nashua, which we always attend, and flags are displayed on all the lamp posts along downtown Main St. These tribute banners are very moving, John.