Friday Funny November 11, 2011

I know you were expecting something humourous, but I didn't feel that was appropriate for Remembrance Day. Instead, I offer you this:


I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.
John Diefenbaker


I hope I never forget how fortunate I am to be a Canadian. "Thank you" is not enough for the women and men who have ensured those freedoms for us in the past and the peacekeepers who strive to do the same for others today.


I was moved the first time I read this poem, but I never knew who wrote it and his background. I take a certain amount of pleasure in noting where he lived. 


High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Officer John G. Magee, Jr. - November, 1941

A Short Biography of John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr. was born in Shanghai, China 9 June 1922. As he reached high school age, he played rugby in England and spent three years there. Meanwhile, his parents had returned to the United States and his father, Reverend Magee, became a chaplain at Yale University. John Magee Jr. returned to the United States in 1939 to attend Yale.
The Second World War began September 1939. In October, 1940, at age 18, John Magee Jr. went to Canada and enrolled in the RCAF. After his flight training, he went back to England a commissioned pilot officer. In the course of his training in the spitfire, he was assigned to make a high altitude flight "into the stratosphere". On landing, he went to his quarters and there wrote his now famous sonnet on the back of a letter to his mother.

Today, especially, I remember 

Stewart Messinger and William Rees.

LEST WE FORGET