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“We Remember Them,” composed by Susan LaBarr in 2017, is a poignant choral work for SATB voices and piano, drawing from a Jewish liturgical prayer of remembrance by Rabbis Sylvan Kamens and Jack Riemer. Its text unfolds as a meditation on grief and continuity: “When we are weary and in need of strength, we remember them… In the laughter of a child, in the flush of a lover’s kiss, we remember them.” The refrain anchors the piece—”As long as we live, they too shall live, for they are now a part of us, as we remember them”—evoking the enduring presence of the departed in the rhythms of the living. LaBarr’s melody, with its contemporary ballad sensibility and accessible harmonies, renders the work suitable for concerts, memorials, or funerals, transforming solemn reflection into a shared act of renewal.
On this Remembrance Day, let us pause amid the shortening light to honor the fallen, whose silent valor secured the fragile edifice of our freedoms. In their names, we pledge not mere recollection, but resolve: to guard against the tempests of division and the sirens of forgetfulness, so that their sacrifice endures not as echo, but as foundation.
Lest we forget.
Lest We Forget.
Poignant words. Powerful words. Oft recited words by people of all political stripes, but what do they mean? Do we honour them on Remembrance Day, every other day?
The words are often added to the end of the Ode of Remembrance, although they were never a part of it. As the actual Ode of Remembrance is actually quite long, we often only hear the third and fourth stanzas:
- They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
- Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
- They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
- They fell with their faces to the foe.
- They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
- Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
- At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
- We will remember them.
I remember hearing this every year during school, from grades 1 to 12, and repeating Lest We Forget back to the speaker at the end of the recital of that poem. I remember seeing the veterans of WWI and WWII dressed in their uniform and being proud of them. I was told they were great men, and I still believe they are today. The WWI veterans fought in the Great War, the war to end all wars it was called. We were very lucky to still have some among us in my small town. The WWII veterans fought what could be called a continuation of that war. But finally they won the war, again, and this could be the end of war.
I also remember the days that were not the eleventh day of the eleventh month of my childhood. I remember the first Gulf War, and what heroes we were being by rescuing Kuwait. I remember glorifying the soldier and the war. I remember trading collectible cards. I remember watching that war on television every night with my father and talking about it the next day with my classmates during recess. It was what everyone was doing.
Hardly what those who fought the war to end all wars would have wanted us to do, I would think. As just as that war may or may not have been, the glorification of that war instead of what should have been a sombre seems contrary to the spirit of remembrance.
Lest We Forget?
Of course, then there are all the wars that have been fought by the participants of WWI and WWII since then. Korea in the 50’s. Vietnam in the 60’s and 70’s. Iraq and Kosovo in the 90’s. Of course the omnipresent, hyper-militarization of the Cold War throughout that time. Then of course the Current war in Afghanistan and the second Iraq war. If you count Canada’s garrisons ready to fight during the cold war, there has not been a single decade that’s passed since the end of WWII that Canada has not been involved in the making of war.
Lest We Forgot?
Lest We Never Learned Our Lessons at All?
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Mystro
The Arbourist
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