Tears in a Bottle & Honouring our Veterans

                                              War Brides: Portraits of an Era -- Canadian War Museum 

Put Thou My Tears Into a Bottle 

Psalm 56:8 KJV

We"ve decided that the rain will likely hold off long enough for us to cycle to the Belleville cenotaph for the Remembrance Day commemoration. Through the years I've joined with others at cenotaphs in the wind and cold of November 11th mornings in various cities and town across the country, including in Point Pleasant Park in Halifax. I've felt that it was important to honour veterans, including three of our parents, and in all of those gatherings there was a spiritual component, recognizing sacrifice and the notion that  "no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:13). 

Earlier this week I got thinking about the sacrifice and courage of the mother-in-law I never met, who was a war bride. She was also a veteran having served as a WREN during the war. 

Norah, namesake for the one of our daughters as a middle name, left behind a close family and friends to sail across an ocean to Halifax, then travel by train to Toronto where she was met by a husband she could hardly have known given the circumstances of war. They were married only months before he was demobilized and waited six months more to come to Canada. Max was training to be a Presbyterian clergyman and she accepted the role of minister's wife while raising five children. 

When we lived in Halifax around the turn of the millenium we explored the Pier 21 Museum of Immigration Museum where she and many of the nearly 44,000 war brides and their 22,000 children made landfall in Canada. In her journal she wrote about arriving on April 4, 1946 to a Salvation Army band playing Hear Comes the Bride and O Canada. The next day she was on the train through a still wintry landscape on her way to a happy reunion.

Then in 2007 we visited the Canadian War Museum during a couple of days in Ottawa. This excursion ranked very low on Ruth's agenda, but it became a meaningful exploration of her personal past. There was a major exhibition called  War Brides: Portraits of an Era which featured powerful paintings of some of the brides by Bev Tosh. On Mother's Day of that year 300 of the women, all seniors, came to Ottawa for their own tour. 

As the number of WWII vets dwindles, can there be many of those intrepid war brides left in our midst? They certainly deserve to be honoured and remembered today. 

Oh yes, that enigmatic verse from Psalm 58 was atop some of the stationery used for correspondence during the war. So many tears were shed.

SS Ile de France War Bride Transport