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Try harder to make and keep peace

Some of us wear white poppies. Some of us wear both white and red. We will all be gathering, as usual, on Nov. 11 at the Spanish Civil War memorial on Menzies above Belleville.

Some of us wear white poppies. Some of us wear both white and red.

We will all be gathering, as usual, on Nov. 11 at the Spanish Civil War memorial on Menzies above Belleville. This year we will start our vigil at 10:45 because we don’t want our singing of a peace song or two to interfere with the official Remembrance Day ceremony on the Legislature lawn. Also, we don’t want our own vigil to be interrupted by cannon fire salutes.

The white poppy campaign for peace was begun by British First World War widows, was taken over by the U.K. Women’s Co-operative Guild in 1933 “to honour the war dead by seeking non-military solutions to war” and is now held in many nations to commemorate all those killed in wars — civilians as well as soldiers.

I wear both red and white. My sister was widowed at 19; her husband was a rear gunner. My father died after being bombed in an air raid shelter. My first husband died 18 years after service as a paratrooper; he had recurrent fevers from the jungles of the Far East and post-traumatic stress disorder.

All wars are a failure. We must try harder to make and keep peace.

Alison Acker

Victoria