To follow up my post last year, I am thinking of Flight Sergeant Alfred Reid Chalmers on this Remembrance Day. Chalmers lived at 20 Gerrard Street East. He served in the 101st Royal Air Force Squadron during WW II. 
   During a bombing run in the Air War over Denmark, on the return flight Chalmers's Lancaster bomber was attacked by a German night fighter and his plane crashed at Dejbjerg. Reports were that the plane exploded in the air and crashed in the fields below. A search for the crew remains was first conducted by the Wehrmacht and then a search was organized under the command of Captain Kisbye of C.B.U. in Herning and the remains collected were placed in four coffins and taken to the Dejbjerg cemetery where members of the resistance movement had dug a grave. On September 14, 1944 the crew were laid to rest.

More here: http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/collections/virtualmem/Detail/2270940?Alfred%20Reid%20Chalmers/

Remember a soldier from your Toronto neighbourhood here: http://globalnews.ca/news/932833/

On this day, it’s not the sound of the firewood crackle in the cottage stove, not the taste of cool maple syrup on warm pancakes, not the feel of the smooth canoe paddle as it dips in the early morning water, not the smell of the hickory bbq sauce on marinated chicken breasts, not the sight of sparkling sunlight on a rippling lake, that I am focused on. Today I’m locked on words, Canadian words, the words of man of letters Francis Reginald Scott. I did a school project on the lawyer, politician and social activist years ago and a few poems stuck with me like sap on my hand from a tree trunk as I steady my way down to the water’s edge.  One is below. 

Happy Canada Day!

Lakeshore by F.R. Scott

The lake is sharp along the shore
Trimming the bevelled edge of land
To level curves; the fretted sands
Go slanting down through liquid air
Till stones below shift here and there
Floating upon their broken sky
All netted by the prism wave
And rippled where the currents are.

I stare through windows at this cave
Where fish, like planes, slow-motioned, fly.
Poised in a still of gravity
The narrow minnow, flicking fin,
hangs in a paler, ochre sun,
His doorways open everywhere.

And I am a tall frond that waves
Its head below its rooted feet
Seeking the light that draws it down
To forest floors beyond its reach
Vivid with gloom and eerie dreams.

The water's deepest colonnades
Contract the blood, and to this home
That stirs the dark amphibian
With me the naked swimmers come
Drawn to their prehistoric womb.

They too are liquid as they fall
Like tumbled water loosed above
Until they lie, diagonal,
Within the cool and sheltered grove
Stroked by the fingertips of love.

Silent, our sport is drowned in fact
Too virginal for speech or sound
And each is personal and laned
Along his private aqueduct.

Too soon the tether of the lungs
Is taut and straining, and we rise
Upon our undeveloped wings
Toward the prison of our ground
A secret anguish in our thighs
And mermaids in our memories.

This is our talent, to have grown
Upright in posture, false-erect,
A landed gentry, circumspect,
Tied to a horizontal soil
The floor and ceiling of the soul;
Striving, with cold and fishy care
To make an ocean of the air.

Sometimes, upon a crowded street,
I feel the sudden rain come down
And in the old, magnetic sound
I hear the opening of a gate
That loosens all the seven seas.
Watching the whole creation drown
I muse, alone, on Ararat.

We mark Remembrance Day on November 11. This year my thoughts turn to three specific souls who were lost in World War I.

Thanks to Global TV Toronto's incredible Canada Remembers website, Torontonians can find out about WW I soldiers who paid the ultimate price using its interactive map. 

www.globalnews.ca/topics/canadaremembers2012

Sergeant Frank Jarrett, Sapper Edward M. Agnew (Military Engineer) and Private Arthur C. White, these three men either lived or had next of kin who lived on Gould, Mutual and Church Streets; streets I walk every day.

The Global TV map also links to www.canadiangreatwarproject.com, where you can find a wealth of information including their ages, occupations, when and where they enlisted, where and how they perished, where they rest - among other details.

Jarrett was a married butcher who enlisted late in 1915. He was a tall and handsome man at 30 who was assigned to The Second Battalion of the Canadian Railway Troops (CRT). The CRT built the railway networks that supplied the Front.  He had served previously with the 24th Canadian Regiment and the 7th Canadian Mounted Rifles. He died four months after he enlisted and is buried in Oxfordshire, England.

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/collections/virtualmem/photoview/392953/117097

A sapper is a soldier that has engineering duties. Originally used to build trenches under fire in ancient warfare, the term comes from the old French word sappe which means spade. Agnew also served the CRT, in the 5th Battalion.  He was a successful engineer working on a project in Northern Manitoba and left to enlist in Winnipeg in January 1916. He lied about his age, saying he was 43, when he was actually 53. Agnew was wounded by shrapnel while repairing a rail line near Ypres in October 1917. He was evacuated to England, and then to Toronto a year later, to recover.   He was discharged as medically unfit for duty a week after the war ended.  Sadly, Agnew died of his injuries in the summer of 1919 and is buried in Prospect Cemetery on St. Clair Avenue West.  His wife lived on Mutual Street.

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/collections/virtualmem/photos/425945

Arthur White was a chauffeur and enlisted on February 1, 1916 at 26.  He joined Toronto 169th Battalion.  He fought in Belgium and was reported missing October 13, 1917.  It is likely that he died in the first Battle of Passchendaele.  Not much is known about how he died and his body was never recovered.  White's name is inscribed on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres, the memorial was erected for soldiers who were killed and whose graves are unknown.

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/collections/virtualmem/photos/1596996

On this day, I am grateful for the sacrifices these men made so that we can all be free.