As this is the last day that the legislature will sit before Remembrance Day, the Premier rose to deliver a statement on its importance.

I rose shortly thereafter to provide a brief response, which I reproduce in text and video form below.

Video of Statement

Text of Statement

I would like to join the Leader of the Official Opposition and the Premier in spending some time to reflect upon what we will be experiencing on the 11th hour of November 11, in two weeks.

On the 11th hour of the 11th month in 1918, World War I came, officially, to an end. A year later King George V declared that November 11 would be Armistice Day. Ever since then, we’ve taken a time and a moment to reflect upon what those before us have actually accomplished, done and given to make us have the ability to live the lives that we live today.

I hear the stories from the member of the official opposition, who talks about his family. Earlier this week we had a very important moment in my family’s life, where we passed a bill memorializing Holodomor, a dark period in Ukrainian history. So many of our Canadian relatives have experiences through that.

To the Second World War. Many of us here will have ancestry in England. My father grew up as a little boy in Birmingham at a time when Coventry — the cathedral, as you all know — was bombed. They had a bomb shelter in their yard. His father worked building military planes. Outside of the house, they had smokestacks to fill the skies with black smoke so the bombers wouldn’t see the lights down below.

These are the stories that we have, but as time goes on, we begin to forget these stories. That is why November 11 is such an important day. It makes us all, each and every one of us, reflect upon what has happened so that we might collectively say: “Never again.”

As such, I think it would be entirely appropriate, hon. Speaker, with your leave, for all of us to take a moment of silence, in that we won’t be here together on that day.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you, Member.

Let us do that. A moment’s silence, please.