Remembrance Day 2025

Opening Remarks for the Nov. 11, 2025 ceremony by Dr. Karen Ewing

Today, November 11th, 2025, the world’s Doomsday clock reads 89 seconds to midnight, the closest we have ever been. First set in 1947 after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, terrified atomic researchers set the metaphorical clock at 7 minutes to midnight, a warning to humanity against nuclear annihilation. In 1991, at end of the Cold War and the signing of nuclear proliferation treaties, the risk was reduced and the clock reset at 17 minutes. Today, with those same Nuclear treaties in tatters and the threatened resumption of nuclear tests, the nuclear arms race has begun again and the threat of accident or intentional deployment of nuclear war heads has pushed our risk to 89 seconds to midnight.

Meanwhile, on August 27th 1928, almost 100 years ago and 10 years after ‘the war to end all wars’ with much of Europe still clearing rubble and finding its way forward, in France, huge crowds gathered as world leaders arrived at the French Ministry in Paris. Thousands filled the streets, cheering, clamouring onto rooftops, scaling street lamps . . . we’ve seen the pictures. The advocacy of millions all over the world had prevailed. World leaders had gathered to sign an historic document, The Kellogg-Briand Pact. The entire ceremony lasted less than an hour and at 3:57 p.m., a member of the Swiss Guard, in full dress regalia, slammed his (halberd) battle axe onto the floor and for the first time in the history of the world, war had been declared illegal.

This may sound improbable at best, inconsequential at worst, and yet, this did happen. Those 10 years, 1918-1928 followed a war that killed more people, more soldiers and more civilians than all previous known wars combined. New industrialized weapons, tanks, machine guns, mortars, mustard gas, submarines and planes killed at least 20 million soldiers and broke the body, mind and spirit of 20 million more. Much of Europe lay in ruins, civilians starved, diseased and dead under the rubble totalled over 10 million. This unprecedented horror ushered in a decade-long quest for a lasting peace.

Peace had echoed through so many speeches, sermons, dissertations and papers, in literature poetry and song, that it had found its way into the very consciousness, the very soul of people everywhere. Never in history was peace so discussed, so sought after, so necessary.

A collective decision had been made, the people had determined our world would never see such wanton carnage again. Humanity had arrived. Humanity had achieved at tremendous, unthinkable and unimaginable cost, a new knowledge, a clear understanding of the dangers of nationalism, imperialism, secret alliances and militarism and what they could do, especially with these new weapons of war.

1918-1928 saw the founding of The Fellowship of Reconciliation, The International War Resistance, The World Peace Association, and The Women’s Peace Society to name a few. In 1921, Nova Scotia Suffragist Christine Ross Barker, a member of The Women’s International League of Peace, founded The Women’s Peace Union - Canadian and American women working to outlaw war.

Furthering this Outlawry movement was US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French Minister of Foreign Affairs and Nobel Laureate Aristide Briand. They proposed a Pact “condemning the use of war as an instrument of National Policy and demanding disputes between nations be settled peacefully”, in essence, depriving war of its legitimacy . . . making war illegal. The Kellogg-Briand Pact was ratified by 63 countries, including Canada, and won Kellogg a Nobel Peace Prize, his remains laid in Bishop Marianne Edgar Budd’s Cathedral in DC and his name on a street in Minnesota on which any person asked will tell you the street was named after a cereal company.

The Pact is still in effect.

It did not, however, usher in world peace. WWII, an even more devastating and destructive war than the first, began 11 years later, AND YET, the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact is seen as one of the most transformative events in human history. This Pact, introducing the illegality of war, replaced a system where atrocities committed under war were legal, annexation and occupation, gunboat diplomacy, burning, looting, pillaging, negotiating under duress and more . . . all were legal in war. War created peace. Now, war was the crime.

After 1928, international law began to be crafted and recognized and the “crime of war” could be prosecuted and was prosecuted after WWII in the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. This Kellogg-Briand Pact, this new understanding of international law has ushered in over 3000 treaties and agreements between nations enhancing international cooperation and conflict resolution and most countries recognize the illegality of annexation and occupation.

AND YET . . . annexation and occupation are part of the wars of today. Authoritarian Autocracy, Nationalism and Militarism, seen as major contributors to WWII, are once again familiar refrains.

Milan Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, said “the struggle of man against power has always been the struggle between memory and forgetting”. Just 80 years since the end of a war that killed 100 million, democracies fall and authoritarians rise again.

An historian’s job is to raise the dead, and allow them to speak. Rainer Maria Rilke, at the turn of the 20th century, before the world wars, before the doomsday clock had been set, wrote just, “grant us one more hour . . . the churches and the cloisters, and those who labour”, grant them time to try and repair the world, “before the horror when you once again remove your name from it all.”

Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa reminds us “we are always standing in the rubble of the world that was, . . . we are always, and have always, been fighting for something”, for the freedom we cherish, for rights, for equality. We are all a part of the rising and the falling, and democracies have been falling since their peak in the last century. Democracy, although flawed, is the best model, the best chance we have to make and keep peace. But as we know, democracies are hard work. Decisions for the betterment of all, involve sacrifice, involve compromise, and must be based in truth and the rule of law. Unrest and scarcity, real or imagined, stokes our fear and authoritarians, ever present, are allowed to rise and somehow convince us that only they can save us, and our way of life, from the "marauders", from the "others", whomever they deem them to be.

Just 10 years ago, Authoritarians ruled 42% of all the worlds people, 3.2 billion. Today, 72% of the earth’s population is under authoritarian rule. And this number is rising. This has only ever lead to war. We have little time to try to turn this around. We are in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness AND YET, the sky still holds a million candles.

The question for us, is the same question asked of our grandparents over 100 years ago. Does it matter to you? Does it matter to you as it mattered to them? Is the world worth fighting for? Is what we cherish -our freedoms, our rights, our inherited peace (a peace for which many died) and what we have built from that peace in the past 80 years - worth fighting for? For us and for our children?

Less than 100 years ago, this inherited peace, the peace we love and cherish, echoed through speeches, papers, sermons and song . . . loudly. This peace, so much on the minds and in the hearts and in the conscience of people that for the first time in history, we, as collective humanity, agreed to make war illegal. We can find that resolve again, we have done it before, and we are not alone. Organizations like The Democratic World Liberty Congress, The Peace Coalition, The World Beyond War, Veterans for Peace, Voices of Women for Peace are all gaining ground; peace, equality, democracy, are all important works and we can join them.

Whatever action we take, whatever answer we give, whatever replaces this fear, so painful for so many - whatever it takes to try and help the world, will be more inclusive, more generous, more truthful, more compassionate, more empathetic and more democratic. We know this. We know this because it has happened before. The question is, does it matter to you, as it mattered to them? We are 89 seconds to war.

AND YET, we are here in this place.

Give us one more hour so we can love this world as they loved, serve this world as they served, as many here continue to serve.

We have an inherited peace from our grandparents, and from the people surrounding you here in uniform, and from the people remembered on these stones. Rainer Maria Rilke revealed for us, “the great secret of death is that taking one that is loved from you, does not wound you . . . without also raising your understanding of that life and of your own . . . you have been changed.” We have been changed. We do love this world as they have loved . . . it is why we are here.

The act of remembrance starts here with the laying of wreaths, but it does not end here. An historian’s job is to wake the dead and allow them to speak. Today, of all days, we can hear them if we listen, from beyond the veil, they return and they speak.

Rilke states, “Oh quiet one how far you have come, let your darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. Let the things that battered you become your strength”, become our strength in our work for peace. “And when the world ceases to hear you”, we will speak . . . we will speak of peace.

We will remember...Lest we forget.