A woman lifted a conch shell skyward in Indigenous tribute, its sound cutting through the cold to open the Remembrance Day ceremony at Fort York on Nov. 11.
Remembrance felt personal, not a distant history. Eighty years after the Second World War, many in the crowd carried a family name with them, a reminder that almost everyone is connected in some way, regardless of how much time has passed.
After a land acknowledgement and tribute to Elder Garry Sault, the program included the national anthem, prayers, The Last Post, two minutes of silence, a recital of In Flanders Fields and a wreath-laying ceremony.
"The Last Post always really hits me," Canadian Forces Cpl. Joseph Acosta said. He said he came to represent his unit and his country. His connection to the day is rooted in his family: his great-grandfather, Sgt. Fred Evans, who served in the Dieppe Raid in France, was a prisoner of war for three years and escaped during a death march as Allied forces advanced.
"It's a very important day for Canadian history, and looking back on the massive sacrifice of the troops," he said.
The sacrifice Acosta described is part of the significance of the ceremony grounds: roughly 130 soldiers died in the 1813 Battle of York at Fort York.
"The Strachan Avenue Military Burial Ground is Toronto's third-oldest military cemetery. We were the original garrison for the city of Toronto," said Katie Groh, a historical interpreter at Fort York. The cemetery holds up to 200 graves of 19th-century veterans, which is why the city gathers here on Remembrance Day.
Groh also carries a personal link: "My grandfather's older brother died in the war in Italy.
"I hope younger Canadians continue the traditions of Remembrance Day and realize the sacrifice that other Torontonians and Canadians made, especially in the First and Second World Wars, and keep that remembrance alive so we don't repeat the same tragic events," she said.
More than one million Canadians served and more than 42,000 died, including about 3,400 Torontonians, emcee Richard Hills told the crowd.
That scale reached beyond Toronto, a Netherlands-born reverend told the crowd, recalling his childhood under occupation and hiding at his grandfather's farm, which was used as a safe house for people targeted by the Germans.
"One day, a car stopped at the end of the driveway with two men in it," Rev. Jan Hieminga said. "We assumed they were men needing a safe place to stay. We didn't know they were Germans.
"They asked for my grandfather; when he came outside, they put him in the car and took him to prison," he said. "He was arrested because he had a radio on the farm that connected the Dutch underground with the Allies in England. We didn't know where they had taken him, and later found out he had ended up in a concentration camp in Germany, where he died just before the war was over."
Back in his hometown in the Netherlands, a monument commemorates his grandfather's name. For 80 years since the liberation of the Netherlands by Canadians, special services are held to remember him and all those who are victims of war.
In Toronto, people pressed their poppies into the wreaths as they left the ceremony. Green rings turned to red, each flower representing a life remembered.
