Why Canadians spent Remembrance Day in Paris
A huge number of leaders from the worldwide sat by the Tomb of Unknown Soldier at The Paris’ Arc de Triomphe on Sunday to mark 100 years ceremony since the signing of an armistice that was ended up in the First World War.
On the grey, dreary and rainy morning, more than thousands of people spent hours in line to see the event – but a tight security kept them far back from the leaders that they had to see on the giant screens instead.
Neither pouring down rain nor lack of an access to the thinned crowds. Among all of them, a handful of Canadians are being recognizable by their poppies.
Daniel Sonego, who came to Paris from Ottawa, said that he wrote his Master’s degree on the First World War and thought that it is coming here to see the centennial which would be the trip of a lifetime.
He also said that it is a sort of birth in a tragedy, but hopefully, they’ve learned the different lessons of the war.
“You may hope we can learn, and it is true that we haven’t learned enough,” said Paul Thomson.
Thomson came from Guelph, Ont. to Paris, Albert George Hughes, Thomson’s great uncle was killed at age 20 in the First World War.
In the year 1916, Hughes was sent to the front and spent a short time in trenches as a soldier with the Western Ontario Regiment before he was killed in the war.
