Chesley District High School Students marked Remembrance Day a day early — with a moving ceremony focusing on Canadian forces liberating The Netherlands in 1945.
The school holds its service the day before so students can attend Cenotaph ceremonies on Remembrance Day itself.
Chesley Legion member John Verdonk was a child in The Netherlands during World War Two.
He shared his experience of living under Nazi occupation, the starvation, and how his family was in danger because his father’s involvement in the Dutch resistance.
Verdonk says he’s seen people laying dead by the roadside, he says it never bothered him as a child, but he knows it would affect adults differently.
Student Hilary Smith says it was amazing to hear Verdonk’s story and was surprised by how shocking and horrific events seemed commonplace to him.
Verdonk says our biggest problem today is that we’ve had it so good for so long, and we wouldn’t know what we’ve lost if our freedom disappeared because so many of us haven’t experienced hardship.
The school’s band gave a series of musical performances, students and staff read poems and historical information on Canada’s role in the liberation.
Student Chanelle Beresford says Remembrance Day is important at Chesley High School because anything that involves emotion about the past is something they care about and appreciate.
About 40 students from Chesley District High School will travel to the Netherlands to see Canadian War cemeteries and other sites in May 2010.
20 men from Chesley were part of Canada’s liberation forces in 1945.
Four of them are buried in The Netherlands.
25 people from Tara took part, one is buried there.