Canada Day? Not so much.

I have lived all my life in a part of Canada where Canada's national

day, July first, is Memorial Day, in sad memory of the horribly

disastrous battle 100 years ago today at Beaumont-Hamel, a part of the

larger battle of the Somme. In a country where only a quarter of a

million people lived in 1916, the hundreds of losses that day were so

great that, even now, four generations later, thousands of people come

out each year on its anniversary to remember. I was there today amid

the crowd, so I'm not one to be able to judge numbers, but a neighbour

told me there were ten thousand people there.



It's a dual-personality day. This evening, the city goes into Canada

Day mode and the federal government sponsors fireworks.