RANDALL WHITE. FERNWOOD PARK, TORONTO. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2025. We have had an early almost sudden and surprisingly serious snowstorm in these parts. It somehow seems to fit these several days in early-mid November.

Through such events as Indigenous Veterans Day (November 8) and Remembrance Day (November 11), our official public life still tries to remember and show suitable gratitude to all those who have given their lives, so we Canadian people can live safely in our “free and democratic society.”

(As finally legally enshrined in the Constitution Act, 1982, by agreement of nine provincial legislatures and the federal parliament.)

Other years I have sometimes gone to the neighbourhood commemoration ceremony, presided over by the executive of the local Canadian Legion (“Baron Byng” branch of the Ontario Command in this case). The sudden surprisingly deep early snowfall — albeit quickly enough melting with the more seasonal and warmer actual Remembrance Day 2025 — made this an unattractive option for an aging body.

I was nonetheless well enough served by my 65 inch TV, in a comfortable warm room whose only window is on an alley that doesn’t really show the snow.

I could watch the Canadian Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa, the more local (if not local neighbourhood) ceremony at the Old Toronto City Hall (starring the well dressed, well spoken, and still vaguely hot-looking Mayor Olivia Chow), and various other local ceremonies across the country (thanks to our local TV channel subscriptions).

I could even watch (but of course did not) the increasingly bizarre President Trump’s Veterans Day harangue 2025 from the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

In pondering what it all means at this particular point in the already long enough story of Marshall McLuhan’s global village, I find myself (once again) coming to rest on a tidy pronouncement from our Canadiam Prime Minister Mark Carney : “In an increasingly dangerous and divided world, remembrance is also vigilance.”

It is in this context, I suppose, that we are meant to see such recent federal policy announcements as : “Canadian military wants mobilization plan in place to boost reserves to 400,000 personnel … The Canadian Forces has established a ‘tiger team’ to look at how such a massive influx can be achieved, as the current reserve strength stands at 28,000.”

(It has been said, somewhat whimsically, that everyone suffers under the Carney government’s new Budget 2025, except the military. Or, it may be more apt to specify, the new Canadian miniature military industrial complex that Mark Carney seems determined to build up, to help replace the Canadian industrial economy disrupted by Donald Trump’s trade war.)

As someone who grew up in an extended family of old Toronto militia (now reserve) regiment musicians, I do like the idea of boosting our Canadian military reserves to 400,000 personnel, in the increasingly divided and dangerous world we now live in. I think it’s a good use of scarce public funds, for several very good present-day reasons..

And, no doubt like every other ordinary Canadian citizen today, at this particular moment on November 11, 2025, I am profoundly grateful to all those who have courageously made the ultimate sacrifice in defence of the great freedom and democracy we often so absent-mindedly enjoy in the 21st century — 80 years after the end of the Second World War.