“What is the right fight?”
This is a question Claude Weil will discuss at Davidson’s Remembrance Day Service next Monday.
Weil, who served three years in an Israeli combat unit in the 1970s, knows about conflict.
He was born in the French colony of Algeria (North Africa) in 1954 and grew up in the village of Mézériat near Lyon in France.
He remembers, as a schoolboy, how the entire school would march with First and Second Word War veterans to the cenotaph in Mézériat for Remembrance Day services.
While driving to Regina a couple years ago, he stopped in Davidson and visited the cenotaph on main street and was appalled by the number of casualties Davidson suffered on the Western Front. He told his childhood friend, Etienne Robin, who is now Mézériat’s mayor. Robin wrote the Town of Davidson a letter to let them know that these sacrifices are remembered. In the letter Robin wrote: “This letter is a modest homage from us to the long lost soldiers of Davidson who fought for the freedom of so many French people they did not even know and would never know. Be assured that the sons your village left in our soil are well loved and their graves well cared for. Their families are dear to our hearts. They did not sacrifice in vain.”
The letter was featured in The Davidson Leader last November and the story interested Gord McRae, president of Davidson’s branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, so he asked Weil to speak at this year’s Nov. 11 service.
“I thought the letter the mayor (from Mézériat, France) sent was intriguing and it encouraged me a lot to try something different,” McRae said of why he invited Weil to speak at Davidson’s Remembrance Day service.
For years McRae has worked organizing Davidson’s Remembrance Day Service. He wants to keep it relevant so as to ensure new generations participate in the act of remembering Canada’s war casualties. Partnerships with DICA and Davidson School have helped to keep the Remembrance Day Service going in light of the fact Davidson’s Legion branch isn’t very active due to declining membership.
“I thought (having Claude Weil speak) would be something different to try and get the public coming back to the service,” McRae said.
He hopes people attend the Remembrance Day service, but worries people may treat the statutory day off like a holiday because it falls on a Monday, giving people a long weekend.
To read more please see the November 4 print edition of The Davidson Leader.