The deadly art of forgetfulness

November 11, 2025

By Nate Smelle

Every year on November 11, Canadians stop what they’re doing—if only for a few minutes—to bow their heads, listen to the haunting notes of the “Last Post”, and remember those who have made the ultimate sacrificed for the fragile freedoms and peace we enjoy today. We pin poppies to our coats, stand in silence, and recite the words we’ve all heard since childhood: “Lest we forget.”

But somehow, we always do.

We forget that behind every war memorial lies not just a story of courage and sacrifice, but one of grief, loss, and regret. We forget that the lesson buried with each fallen soldier and civilian isn’t about glory—it is about the futility of repeating the same mistakes over and over. And as the world burns once again, it’s hard not to see Remembrance Day for what it has become: a routine ritual of memory lost within a noisy culture of amnesia.

More than two decades ago, The Bancroft Times published an editorial inspired by the Remembrance Day poster contest organized by Royal Canadian Legion Branch 181. It was 2001, two months after the attacks of Sept. 11. The “War on Terror” had just begun, and Canadian soldiers were once again preparing to fight overseas. Yet, amid the noise of fear and vengeance, the children of Bancroft were drawing doves and peace signs.

Out of 193 posters, 112—nearly 60 per cent—were dedicated to peace. Their messages were as innocent as they were profound: “War Solves Nothing”; “Please Never Do This Again”; and “Let the Guns Be Silent.”

Those words came from the hands of children who had seen the world’s violence through television screens. They had watched the towers fall and the toxic smoke rise, and somehow they understood what so many adults could not: that war never ends where it begins, and no side walks away unscarred.

Now, some 24 years later, as fascist oligarchs impose their control over governments, the meida, and working class people worldwide, the message these children shared back in 2001 feels more urgent than ever. The war they feared didn’t end—it transformed. The “war on terror” became a perpetual machine, churning through Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, leaving behind deserts of despair and oceans of refugees. Today, that same machinery grinds on in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and Lebanon.

Each night, we scroll past the wreckage on our screens—families digging through rubble, children wailing in bombed-out hospitals—and call it “news.” But what we’re really watching is history on repeat.

We like to believe we’ve evolved beyond the barbarism of the past. We tell ourselves that our wars are cleaner now, more “precise,” guided by smart bombs and moral clarity. But the result is always the same: piles of bodies, profound grief, and mass displacements of people.

The First World War was supposed to be “the war to end all wars.” The Second was fought to stop tyranny. Each time, the world swore it had learned its lesson. Each time, that promise dissolved into next the blood stained battlefield.

What’s changed isn’t our behaviour—it’s our attention span. War has become something we observe, not experience. Drone footage replaces dispatches. Hashtags replace headlines. The suffering of millions is condensed into 30-second clips before being pushed aside by the next outrage.

But for those living through it—those hiding from airstrikes beneath the rubble in Gaza, those trudging through the mud in Ukraine, those searching for loved ones in Sudan—there is no “skip” button. There is only survival.

In Gaza alone, more than 70,000 have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023—over half of them children. In Ukraine, cities have been reduced to dust, and new graves are dug daily. And through it all, the architects of war keep using the same vocabulary—defense, deterrence, strategic necessity, and collateral damage—as if euphemisms could sanitize the slaughter.

Here in Canada, we are insulated by geography and good fortune. Our Remembrance Day ceremonies unfold in peace. The flags ripple in the cold November air. The veterans salute. The schoolchildren sing and write poems about peace.

It’s a comforting image, but comfort is the problem. We’ve become so used to peace that we treat it as permanent—something we inherited, not something we must continually nurture and defend.

In this country, disagreements happen in Parliament, not on battlefields. Our children go to school without wondering if it will still be standing by the time the bell rings. These are privileges we take for granted.

But peace is not a default setting. It’s a fragile construct held together by empathy, accountability, memory, and wisdom. And every time we look away from suffering because it’s happening “over there,” we weaken the very foundations of peace that keep us safe. Remembrance Day, if it is to mean anything, must shake us out of that complacency. It should not be comfortable. The act of remembering the atrocities of war should haunt us.

The children who filled the Legion hall with their peace posters in 2001 understood something timeless: that the only real victory in war is in ending it. Their drawings weren’t naïve; they were brave and honest. It takes courage to hope for peace when the world around you is calling for revenge.

Now adults, those same children are watching the world fall back into the same traps they warned us about. The names of the wars have changed, but the logic has not. The bombs are bigger and more deadly, the rhetoric sharper, but the story is as old as empire: power disguised as protection, cruelty dressed up as necessity.

And once again, it is the children who suffer most.

If “Lest we forget” is to mean anything, it must be more than a slogan. It must be a promise—to remember not just the soldiers and civilians who died, but the lesson they left us with. To remember that peace cannot be built on fear and hatred of the other, that no life is expendable, and that empathy must not stop at national borders.

Peace is not passive. It demands vigilance, compassion, and courage. It demands that we challenge our governments when they choose violence over diplomacy. It demands that we welcome those fleeing war instead of turning them away. It demands that we listen—to the veterans who know what war really is, and to the children who still believe a better world is possible.

This Remembrance Day, when the nation falls silent, let that silence speak louder than words. Let it echo across the decades, back to those classrooms in Bancroft where children once wrote “Please Never Do This Again.” Let it reach the bombed-out streets of Gaza, the frozen trenches of Ukraine, the refugee camps of Lebanon and Sudan. And let it remind us—every one of us—that remembrance without action is just another form of forgetting.

With all our shared history has revealed, by now we should know that war solves nothing. And, that peace only endures when we realize cooperation is more productive than mutual annihilation.