Standing room only as St Pierre meets to remember

Well after the seats were gone, people continued to file into the St Pierre Community Hall to take part in this year’s Remembrance Day ceremony on Nov. 11.

The crowd packed the available space, standing against the back wall and filling the sides of the hall as the annual event shared the stories of local First and Second World War veterans who did not return.

This year the ceremony also included the introduction of a new name to the list of local veterans.

Telesphore Carriere was a Metis Second World War veteran who grew up in La Rochelle area.

St Pierre Bible Fellowship Pastor Troy Dearborn told those gathered that we all have a responsibility when it comes to honouring our veterans.

“I believe that on Remembrance Day when we remember our veterans and those who fought for our country, it’s more than just remembering their names or what they looked like or where they lived,” he said. “To remember them, to honour their legacy is also to remember what it was they fought for, values of selflessness and justice and democracy and peace and hope. Hope that a better future is worth fighting for, that a better future is on the horizon.”

Dearborn admitted maintaining that hope is much easier when the future looks bright.

“When our world is constantly drifting towards uncertainty, instability, violence, fear and division, that’s when hope is hard,” he said. “That’s when we need to remember those who went before us as role models of courage and strength.”

He added it takes courage to hope, to work for peace and to build up what others tear down.

“It takes courage to keep showing up for one another as a community, when the world says look out for yourself,” he said. “Let those acts of selfless love literally become protests against hopelessness.”

Citing In Flanders Fields, a poem written by Lt. Col. John McCrae, Dearborn highlighted the section that urges readers to “take up our quarrel with the foe”.

“The foe is hatred,” he said. “It’s despair. It’s the evil in the world, the darkness that seeps in and affects societies and nations and people’s hearts.”

“The foe of humanity is evil that diminishes and exploits and spreads fear,” he added. “This is the great foe that we fight with hope and acts of selfless love.”

St Pierre Parish Priest Father Paulin Akpapupu had a request for the crowd as well.

“I want us to pray for politicians,” he said. “I want us to pray for all of us to be instruments of peace.”