Alas, I have printed the photos for the class album and wrote up a blurb in French for the class journal. I can write accents but I haven't figured out how to include these in printed text, so please bear with me. I had trouble with writing the last sentence about designing the hairstyle and makeup of an animated character for a computer game, but I am quite pleased with the simple translation that Maggie came up with herself! (you'll see).
Les aventures de Margaret et Spaghetti ce weekend
Je suis allee au parade de souvenir a Belleville avec Papa. Il y avait le parade de veterans et il faisait beau soleil.
Samedi soir, on a visite la maison de mon oncle et aunt. Spaghetti a mange beaucoup de legumes et des biscuits.
Alors nous avons travaille a l'informatique et j'ai cree la fille.
It was a wonderful experience for Maggie to attend a Remembrance Day Ceremony with her dad dressed in military blues. We're in a small town now, so it wasn't the big nationally televised event they have in the nations capital with the F-18 fly past though I suppose this is the air base they depart from so maybe there was a fly-past just four minutes earlier. I stayed at home with AJ and Lincoln cuz we all got hit with coughs and colds. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to turn on the TV and spend a quiet moment at the 11th hour to remember. (I think I was frantically cooking lunch, managing potty training on Lincoln, and setting up a game online for AJ) So Maggie got to wear her first poppy, and see daddy salute the flag as veterans marched by. I wonder what she thinks of war and peace. The only "conflict" we've talked about is Afghanistan because daddy was there briefly and we have a special photo of three afghan girls smiling and possibly going to school. We call it the photo of "a girl worth fighting for" ( a song from the Disney movie Mulan).
I know that Remembrance Day is about remembering the WWI and WWII fallen soldiers, and the lasting peace and also the recent conflicts that Canada has been involved. I've been to Ypres, Vimy Ridge, Dieppe, and the beaches of Normandy, and visited many Canadian military cemeteries in France. But recently on Saturday a new civic monument was unveiled for the repatriation of the fallen in Afghanistan, a civilian gesture on behalf of the people of this city. That's why this November 11 and also previously whenever there a Canadian soldier died, I look up the song "Highway of Heroes" by the Trews.
The song title refers to the stretch of Highway 401 in Ontario, between CFB Trenton and downtown Toronto, where people gather on bridges and overpasses to watch as the the bodies of the fallen soldiers killed in Afghanistan are transported from Trenton to the coroner's office in downtown Toronto. I did not know that they wrote this song originally inspired by their fallen classmate Capt Nichola Goddard. The lyrics are deep, and kinda brings a tear to me eye.
"Carry me home down The Highway of Heroes. People above with their flags flying low. Carry me softly, down The Highway of Heroes. True Patriot Love, There was never more."
http://www.metrolyrics.com/highway-of-heroes-lyrics-the-trews.html
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