Reflection on VE Day 80th Anniversary

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations in our hearts, be acceptable to God, who is our Lord and our Creator. Good. I'm sure members of my regimental family and other guests feel the same way that I do. It's a real honour to be here.

But I must tell you that when Laura, your interim moderator, phoned me, I couldn't stop laughing. You see, I've been retired 15 years. And apart from the odd general sermon, I haven't preached much in the last 10. But that old sermon news that provided two sermons every Sunday, week after week after week, was in a little bit of a rough state.

So I practiced a little bit before I phoned back. And then somewhere the regimental motto was ringing in my ear. The motto—“Ready for the fray.” Well, I agreed. So here I am.

And I must say, although you may not know it, that you are a generous lot. I'm your guest. And as David will tell you, you almost gave me a free hand. Generous. And I might say, brave.

But I'm very much aware that this is your home, not my home, and that your ways may not necessarily be my ways. So as a guest, I've made an effort to try to fit in. And I'm sure that David McLean and a few others that I've met on the way will keep me on track.

So—David's dad, Padre McLean, and I stood together for a number of years at the regimental cenotaph in Pioneer Square on Remembrance Day. And we stood to attention after the parade as the Colonel laid the wreath at the Vimy Cross in the Armoury. An Anglican and a Presbyterian on neutral and on holy ground. That's the way it ought to be, right?

And I remember that the Padre always had the same food offered by the women of Dillery—usually clam chowder. And I can picture him standing there in his raincoat and with his trophy in his hand. He was the Padre before the regiment went overseas. And David tells me that he was underweight for size. He was 30 pounds too light.

And as we stood there, something strange seemed to happen—always. We seemed to be wrapped around in memories together. We both were aware that the old colours of the First Battalion are laid up in the Anglican Cathedral, and that those of the Second Battalion are laid up in St. Paul's in Nanaimo.

But you see, he knew—and I did not know—that there was a regimental memorial here in this church. A window. And what a lovely surprise that was. A lovely surprise. And a very fitting surprise as well.

But whereas cenotaphs are solemn—they have no colour. And you can't see through them. Windows are meant to be looked through. They bring the outside in. And when they're in good repair, as our sergeant over there will know, they keep out the rain. And they keep out the wind.

They are the eyes through which you see a world that otherwise would be cut off. They bring in a natural light. Add colour. Depending upon the position of the sun, they provide a light side and a dark side to any room.

And I remember working for almost a year trying to design a modern stained-glass window for one of the churches that I pastored. We finally discovered that it was important that we could see through the stained glass window.

Windows are important. But it took an artist to finally bring our dream to life.

You have four memorial windows among others: the Navy—which eventually always comes first; the Army—represented by the Canadian-Scottish Regiment; the Air Force; and the Merchant Navy. Captain McLean would be very proud of you—and us—today.

Now the anniversary—the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, May 8, 1945—is something else.

Members of our regimental association fight band are over in Apeldoorn right now. And I had hoped to be with them. But circumstances change.

The Dutch in particular remember this day with the greatest of emotion. And the honour granted to those brave Canadian soldiers is really quite humbling.

I was two years, three months, and one day old and living in England on the 8th of May, 1945. My mother had just had her 27th birthday and my dad was a picture on the sideboard. At least my mum told me that he was my dad. See, I wasn't really sure what “dad” was when he left for India shortly after I was born.

My memories are what my mother—who died only two years ago—told me. We lived on a farm. Mother was a warden and a landowner. But now the farm was closing. We had to bunk in with my grandmother. We had survived.

But on May 8, 1945, my dad was in India still and he was loading money for the troops to be paid as they were embarking off to Japan. It turns out that my father-in-law—who was a Canadian engineer who was refused overseas duty because he wore cork-bottle glasses—he was also slated to go off to Japan.

Mother told me of the great celebration and I've seen pictures. But things really didn't change until D-Day, until some of the troops came marching home. But even then, not all of them came home. Some were buried in Europe. Some in the Far East. Some a long way away from home. Some were in hospitals. Some were assigned to occupation battalions.

The Can-Scots had four battalions in the Second World War. The 1st and 2nd were fighting battalions. The 3rd—an occupation battalion. And the 4th stayed home to recruit and to defend if necessary.

It was a great day. The war, the noise, the death, the fire, the destruction—they all ended.

But it was not the end.

The Brits, you see, had spent their last farthing, and the Jerries were devastated. The concentration camps, the gas chambers were being discovered. And after August that very same year, the atomic bomb had cast its shadow.

My dad came home in 1946, and I think that the first real memory that I have is of a man in uniform appearing at the front door of my grandmother's home and being told that, “This is your dad.” For all those years, I had my mom all to myself. But now there was competition. My brother—my little brother—was born about a year after he came home.

The war has been for many a defining moment. Some never spoke about what they did, what they saw, what happened. Memories, as we all know, can be hard sometimes. But others told some pretty loyal stories.

I guess I was lucky. My parents had what some call a “good war.” I grew up with a mom and a dad who hated war, who came to Canada in part to avoid the Suez Crisis.

All the same, I became a trampolinist in the Canadian Army, and was assigned to the Canadian Scottish Regiment. And I've got to tell you, that as an ordained person, it was a very, very happy accident.

Someone once said there was no life like it—and they really were not wrong.

I started out with the burial of a Regimental Sergeant Major—a retired one—and I recently buried yet another. I've had the privilege of burying, marrying, baptizing, sitting with, listening to many members of the Regiment. And I can't recall how many times I butchered the Selkirk Grace.

I remember listening to a sermon given by Padre Seaborne, who was a wartime padre to a regiment. In it, he mentioned the names of all those he had buried from D-Day to the end of the war. There was not a dry eye in the place. But the ones I buried—many were friends. We are all members of a family.

Let me tell you one story.

We were on exercise in Wainwright, Alberta. And a young soldier came up to me, and he wanted to visit his father's grave. His dad had died some years previously. So I asked the Colonel for permission, and off we went to Vermilion, in the army car.

When we got to the gravesite, the young man went and sat on the grass in front of his dad's grave marker. And he talked. I should say, they talked.

I stayed away to give him some privacy. And to this day, I have no idea what was said. But I do know the importance—to that not-so-young fellow now.

Now, Vermilion is a faraway place. It's across the mountains. But it is not as easily accessible as it would be around the corner in Victoria.

For many, whose loved ones are buried across the sea, memorials like the regimental cenotaph in Pioneer Square, the Vimy Cross in the Armoury, and now your memorial windows, can be another vehicle that can bring those loved ones back to us—bring us back together.

But you are lucky. You can come here on some quiet afternoon, and you can look through those windows. And if your heart is with it, you just might see some old friend—a loved one—pass by. And you might smell the cordite. And when you look at that second window—the window to the Canadian Scottish Regiment—if you are really, really quiet, you may hear the call of the pipes.

Remember, my friends, no one ever wins a war—or a trade war, for that matter, either. There is absolutely no saving grace in total destruction and the willful loss of life.

Those who gave their all did so so that we may win the peace. And those require two different skill sets. That is so painfully apparent today. It seems the skill set to build the peace is desperately lacking.

Those who wore one of those badges in those windows—those who wear them today—they are prepared to pay the price.

And believe me, believe me, those who paid the price, they look back through those windows and they can see us here. And they are wanting to ask: How are we doing? Did they die in vain?