More Than One Way To Honour Our Veterans

People throughout Chatham-Kent, including myself,  have been sporting poppies for the last while to help provide funds for the families of people who died in wars.

On Friday, Canada will celebrate Remembrance Day, a solemn and touching ceremony that involves wreath layings and programs honouring the people who sacrificed so much for all of us.

In Chatham-Kent there will be people who don’t belong at these ceremonies; who don’t belong anywhere near such a s proceeding because they have dishonoured those brave people who are being honoured. I am referring of course to that body of people who were too lazy or apathetic to vote in the federal and provincial elections that have taken place since Nov. 11, 2010.

The people being honoured, the living veterans and those who made the ultimate sacrifice, so future generations would have the right to vote, to choose our leaders; a precious right that so many people have simply ignored. Those are the same people who will complain when their taxes are too high or their roads don’t get fixed or a myriad of other perceived woes, the result of decisions made by elected officials.

There were some people who went to polling stations and decided not to be counted, some sort of idiotic protest against, I suppose the quality or the messages promoted by the candidates for office.

There is no excuse for not voting. Plain and simple. Perhaps people who don’t like the candidates can run themselves or work to get others to put their names forward. Those who don’t like the system can work to change it. But not voting is just plain stupid. Canada is trying to attract immigrants and many of them have come here from countries where people vote at the risk of their lives or don’t have the right that so many people here simply shun.

A refusal to vote is a slap in the face to the very people who are being remembered on Remembrance Day and I wonder if there’s an afterlife what they would think about that refusal.

By Brian Cleeve