Oakville residents filled George’s Square on Tuesday to honour veterans on Remembrance Day. The scene made me think about my family during the war.
My grandmother was born in Tykocin, Poland, in 1943. That fall, German forces took her father to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, now called Rogoźnica.
He never returned.
Her mother was spared only because she spoke German and was told to stay inside and keep the baby quiet. Most of the village was not that lucky. The men were forced into farm labour and the women into sewing uniforms for the German army. My grandmother grew up with the silence that follows fear, and later left communist-era Poland for Canada in 1959.
That history shapes how I see ceremonies like the one in Oakville. Standing in the cold, I watched families gather and a parade of veterans who carried their own decades of memory. It reminded me that remembrance comes from real people and real loss, not symbols from a calendar.
It also made me think about the Canadians who fought in Italy, particularly at the Moro River in 1943, where more than 2,600 Canadians were killed or wounded in one month of fighting. The Moro River Canadian War Cemetery, with 1,375 Canadian graves, shows the scale of sacrifice that still shapes how families remember the war generations later.
One of those people was Drill Sgt. Sebastian Petipal, a Humber Polytechnic student, who was the guard commander at the ceremony. He told me his family’s history is what brings him back each year.
“My grandpa served, my great-grandpa also served, and I just want to pay it back for them,” he said. “My great-grandpa died in the service, and yeah, it just means a lot.”
He hopes young people show up, wear a poppy and understand the weight behind it.
“The only thing we can do is be thankful and do all we can to try to thank them for that,” he said.
I also spoke with Steve Thomas, president of the Royal Canadian Legion Oakville Branch 114. He said the turnout proves the community still understands the meaning of the day.
“We always have a good time, the local community supports us well, and the place is packed,” he said, pointing out the range of people who came.
Listening to him, I thought about my grandmother’s story again. Her uncle fought with the Polish forces under Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery and Gen. Władysław Sikorski, travelling through Italy and surviving battles. He was later resettled in Canada by the British government and helped my grandmother immigrate years later.
That small act of survival made my life possible.
Remembrance Day is not only about soldiers. It is about the families who held on, the children who grew up without fathers, and the communities that still gather in the cold to make sure none of it disappears into history.
At George’s Square, the quiet moments between the speeches mattered most. They reminded me that remembrance is a shared responsibility carried by people who lived it, people who inherited it and people who still learn from it.
