Our forebears were people who understood that the benefits granted by citizenship compelled one to return service to the nation. They signed up in droves to fight in 1914, and again in 1939; following the defeat of Hitler, Canada boasted a million men and women in uniform and the world’s fourth-largest navy.

The stories of those who served tell us much about how myriad peoples with varying traditions and histories can make common cause when united by shared ideas and a love of country. We would do well to remember them.

Take for instance, Ethelbert Christian, or “Curley” as he was known, an African-American who moved to Canada from the United States for a better life and to escape racism. He enlisted with the Canadian Army in 1915, demonstrating considerable gratitude to a country that had only recently taken him in.  

In 1917, Curley suffered life-altering injuries at the Battle of Vimy Ridge losing large portions of both of his arms and both legs, but Curley came back to Canada, married, and became a life-long advocate for veterans’ rights, helping build the country we know today. 

Stanley Edwards was just a kid when he joined the King’s Own Calgary Regiment two days after his eighteenth birthday. Edwards trained in Alberta and Great Britain before taking part in the 1942 raid on Dieppe.  

Edwards, like many of his comrades was captured by the Germans and forced into brutal conditions for the next three years. As a prisoner of war, he tried escaping captivity twice, succeeding on his second attempt, just weeks before the end of the war. Stanley returned home to Alberta in 1945, but two of his brothers, who also enlisted, did not. The sacrifices of the Edwards’ family back then, helped create the Canada we enjoy, today. 

Maxine Llewellyn Bredt was a nurse during the Second World War who spent two years in Italy tending to the wounded, sometimes working sixteen hour days just to keep up. “I just wanted to help,” she said in an interview with Veterans Affairs Canada. After the war, Bredt returned to Canada, married an RCAF pilot, and settled in Montréal, becoming a longtime Royal Canadian Legion member and hospital volunteer.

Much of what makes Canada a great nation stems from the inheritance we have received from people, like those above, who gave much to build a freer future for all. Their stout defence of Canadian principles vouchsafed to us a comfortable living in relative safety. Yet today, we run the risk of forgetting the important details of how we arrived at this elysian shore. If Canadians neglect their history — or worse, let detractors make them ashamed of it — who will rise to our country’s defence in its future hour of need?

During the Battle of Britain, Sir Winston Churchill remarked, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” and while this was manifest at the time, it is no less true today. Those few who enlisted, served, and died, have given multiple generations of Canadians a gift we can never repay.

Canada’s military history may seem less relevant today than it was in the 20^th century, a time when Canada was defined by its participation in two world wars and when many who served in those conflicts were still walking among us. Yet this history still matters in the 2020s because of what it calls us to remember — first, that Canada was capable of much, despite its relatively small population, and secondly, that the flourishing country we enjoy today was made possible by the sacrifices of previous generations.

Canada was once a serious military power in a dangerous world; as we enter a new epoch of geopolitical instability, it can be again. But building a military future requires an acknowledgement of our military past.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we should remember people like Ethelbert Christian, Stanley Edwards, and Maxine Bredt. Their lives ought to serve as inspiration for how we consider our own relationship to our country, and their contribution to the cause of freedom should remind Canadians what we are capable of.