Today, as I walk through an immense field of red poppies gently dancing in a breeze of ignorance, I look at all those people and wonder what’s going through their heads. They are wearing a flower this morning, wore a costume for Halloween and will probably have jeans on at work next Friday just because everybody else does it. So what? What about a meaning?

This being said, I don’t want to remember. I’m actually trying very hard to forget. To forget that Canada keeps getting involved in wars that don’t concern us; that our government keeps sending soldiers abroad to kill and get killed, for the sole purpose of playing the big boys war games.

Wars are not about freedom, they are about power. Who ever achieved freedom from a war fought on somebody else’s land? Now our soldiers are disposable puppets, but at least our modern army has become a professional one and being in the military is now a choice. So my heart goes to the families of those who died at war, whichever country or army they were from. But that’s where my remembrance ends.

Canada does not need an army of invasion slash foreign interference. The only way to justify an army is to protect one’s own soil. An army should not even own planes or ships with a range greater than its own borders. Soldiers should never have to fly away from home.

There is only one way to "remember" and honor the veterans: bring our troops home. Now. Once and for all.

Update – And one last thing. We can’t completely abolish the principle of an army either because let’s be honest, we are a fragile species. If it comes to one final face-off between mankind and our destabilized planet – because of a catastrophic sudden climate shift, a nuclear winter, an alien invasion or a cockroach take-over – the military will be our best line of defense. They are tougher, meaner, and they don’t complain. They just work. If only they could learn a thing or two from us, the non-weapon-bearing rest. And us from them.