At our town’s Remembrance Day service last week there was the usual collection of grey heads, interspersed with a smattering who retain color, and a collection of cubs and scouts.
At this time of the year, the question always arises, “why remember?”
The minister who gave the address had the best answer yet. The young men who died, he said, thought of themselves as defending their homes.
“The best way to honor these men is in the way we live.”
We must make a good community, he said. We must live good lives.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
While this is a time of strain for farmers and those who rely on farming for their income, “we have a lot to be thankful for: we’re free, it’s peaceful here, we’re safe.”
We will honor those men who died, he said, by having a unified community, by laying aside our differences and by caring for people, providing for those in need.
They were noble words, for Remembrance Day and for all days.
When he talked of a unified people, I couldn’t help but think of the delegation that recently went to Ottawa to fight for aid for farmers.
In Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow’s words, it was a “minor miracle” that there was solidarity in the group. Solidarity is not something one sees often amongst our disparate farm groups.
In hindsight, however, I believe the delegation was wrong in one major way: it characterized the income situation as a farm problem.
It is not. It is a rural problem.
There was a Chamber of Commerce representative, but there was not enough weight given to the way the farm crisis is affecting rural Saskatchewan and the businesses and services that depend on farmers for their living.
The face was put on the problems of farm families; rural Saskatchewan and Manitoba as a whole remained faceless.
There’s no need to go back to the drawing board, but the drawing board must be expanded.
The prime minister and his minions must be made aware of the true extent of the problem.
If things are allowed to continue as they are, it will not be just farmers moving out of the rural Prairies, but storekeepers and teachers, doctors and lawyers, nurses and accountants.
Lyle Vanclief lost his farm and isn’t willing to help other farmers keep theirs, but he must be asked, is he ready to be responsible for the demise of the rural Prairies as we know them?
That would surely be carrying his tough love to an untenable extreme.
