rEMEMBRANCE dAY 2025: 1) City of Barrie commemorates Remembrance Day 2025; 2) (Updated) ‘Everybody’s gone’: Canadians mark sombre Remembrance Day as number of vets dwindles; 3)As Remembrance Day marks 80 years since WWII, fewer surviving veterans remain
1) City of Barrie commemorates Remembrance Day 2025
Courtesy Barrie360.com and News Release
By City of Barrie, November 10, 2025
To honour and recognize those who have served our country, Barrie’s Royal Canadian Legion Branch and the City of Barrie join communities across Canada in commemorating Remembrance Day. This year marks the 107th anniversary of the end of the First World War and the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Five Cadets on rotating shifts will stand vigil at Memorial Square on November 10 from 7 p.m. to midnight, and on November 11 from 6 to 9 a.m.
The city also invites the public to participate in the Remembrance Day Parade and Ceremony on November 11 at 10 a.m. The parade will start along Dunlop Street at Mulcaster and march towards Memorial Square, halting in front of the Cenotaph for the ceremony. A Feu De Joie (blank gunfire consisting of a rifle salute) will take place during the ceremony. Two minutes of silence will be observed at 11 a.m., followed by the laying of wreaths.
To safely facilitate the Remembrance Day Ceremony and Parade, the following road closures with no on-street parking will be in effect from 6 a.m. to approximately 12:30 p.m. on November 11:
The intersection of Dunlop Street East and Mulcaster Street will remain open for northbound and southbound traffic along Mulcaster Street until 9:30 a.m. At that time, the intersection will be closed until approximately 12:30 p.m. to facilitate the parade’s movement to/from Memorial Square. The closure impacts Mulcaster Street from Collier Street to Dunlop Street, and Mulcaster Street from Dunlop Street to Lakeshore Mews to allow the parade to pass safely through the intersection at Dunlop Street and Mulcaster Street.
Members of the community, local organizations, or businesses who would like to lay a wreath at the Memorial Square Cenotaph are asked to call the Barrie legion at 705-728-1412 to make arrangements in advance for their wreath to be respectfully placed before the ceremony. Requests should be submitted by Saturday, November 8, at 1 p.m. The wreaths will be removed at the end of the day on Wednesday, November 12. The public is reminded that if they would like to keep their wreath, please pick it up beforehand.
Veterans also ride Barrie Transit free of charge, with one companion, all day on Remembrance Day by showing anything that identifies their status as a veteran.
Remembrance Day Flags
Each fall, the city displays Remembrance Day flags throughout the downtown and waterfront. This year, six new flags were added to the series honouring local veterans, and flag locations and details can be viewed on an interactive map. New this year, the city launched a story map featuring photos and stories shared by local families for this year’s Remembrance Day Flag program.
For more information, visit barrie.ca/RemembranceDay.
2) (Updated) ‘Everybody’s gone’: Canadians mark sombre Remembrance Day as number of vets dwindles
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press,
By Kyle Duggan, November 11, 2025
Eight decades on from the end of the deadliest military conflict in history, Canadians paused for Remembrance Day ceremonies Tuesday to honour those who put their lives on the line for their country.
In chilly Ottawa, next to a National War Memorial lightly dusted with snow, Second World War veteran John Preece, 99, told The Canadian Press he still remembers trudging through the muck in poor weather during the war.
“It was muddy and cold and raining and snowing,” he said. “It wasn’t very nice.”
Preece, who served as a private, was wounded when a sniper bullet struck his arm as he was operating a Bren light machine-gun in Holland in April 1945.
He is one of just a few thousand still-living Canadian veterans from that pivotal war. He said he does not personally know any other living veterans of that conflict.
“When I go to the old regiment in Toronto to visit, there’s nobody. Everybody’s gone,” he said. “How many people do you know who are 100 or more?”
Veterans Affairs Canada estimates that as of this year, there are 3,691 surviving Canadian veterans of the Second World War — 667 women and 3,024 men.
“The events of the Second World War are very rapidly moving from the realm of lived history of people you can talk to … into history where you can’t talk to the people who remember them,” said Jeff Noakes, Second World War historian at the Canadian War Museum.
The stories of that war — from the bloody horrors of combat to the aftermath of postwar economic uncertainty — are passing from the realm of living to recorded history as the number of veterans who remember those days grows smaller.
“Even if you were five years old when the war ended, you’d be 85 now.” said Noakes. “So it’s this big shift from knowing a neighbour or a family member or somebody you could talk to about this into … moving out of the experience of lived history.”
Wayne MacCulloch, a retired major and former peacekeeper who did tours in Haiti and Bosnia, said more civilians should take the time to speak with veterans about their experiences.
He rattled off a series of once-in-a-lifetime experiences from his own military career: being confronted by a machete-wielding crowd in Haiti, detouring into a minefield, getting attacked with chainsaws, finding himself caught in sudden firefights.
“You get the flavour of what it was like to serve when you talk to someone,” he said. “You can see what they experienced in their eyes, and it’s only by getting that real sense of how things actually happen out in Canada’s interests around the globe that you can truly understand what it means.
“And that’s why I always come back for Remembrance Day.”
Silver Cross Mother Nancy Payne laid a wreath during the ceremony on behalf of mothers whose loved ones died in service. Prime Minister Mark Carney, with his wife Diana, paused briefly as he laid his wreath to flatten out the ribbon at its edge.
Afterward, Carney shook hands with several veterans, including three members of the same family who represent different generations of military service.
Ralph Storey turned 88 on Remembrance Day. He served in his late teens on a NATO deployment in Germany in the 1950s.
He attended the service in Ottawa with his son Ed, a fellow military engineer in his 60s, and grandson Charles, in his 30s, who serves in the navy.
“I’m very proud of all of them,” Ralph said.
Family members of the war dead staked out spots hours in advance in Ottawa, braving cold weather to get a good view of the ceremony at the National War Memorial.
Brian Revet, who said he lost an uncle in the Second World War who served as an aircraft gunner, travelled to Ottawa from Saskatoon for the event.
He arrived at 8 a.m. so he could witness up close a ceremony he has cared about deeply throughout his adult life.
“It’s always meant a lot, ever since I was 16 years old. I’ve never served, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like,” he said.
In a rare turn of events, Gov. Gen. Mary Simon was absent from the ceremony as she recovered from a respiratory virus in hospital. Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Wagner stepped in to preside over the ceremony in Ottawa in her place.
An RCMP UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter flew over Ottawa’s ceremony; the RCAF’s CF-18 Hornet fighter jets were grounded due to the weather. In years past, the logistics of de-icing the aircraft prevented them from taking flight in time for the event.
Don Bindon, a 36-year veteran of the RCMP who attended the service in Vancouver dressed in red serge, said his son is in the army and his father served during the Second World War.
He said he attends every Remembrance Day event he can to honour the “awful lot of very good men and women” who died in war.
At the service in Halifax, N.S., Boston’s newly reelected Mayor Michelle Wu accompanied Halifax Mayor Andy Fillmore and said she was happy to attend the ceremony to showcase the continuing relationship between Halifax and Boston.
At Toronto’s Old City Hall, Mayor Olivia Chow said Remembrance Day is especially poignant this year, the 100th anniversary of the Toronto Cenotaph, built in the wake of the First World War.
Artillery fire rang out over the sound of bagpipes at Queen’s Park, part of a 21-gun salute. Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Industry Minister Mélanie Joly were among those attending the ceremony, which ended with the blare of trumpets following a flyby of two Hercules aircraft.
— With files from Nick Murray in Ottawa, Rianna Lim and Sonja Puzic in Toronto, Ian Young in Vancouver and Emily Cadloff in Halifax
3)As Remembrance Day marks 80 years since WWII, fewer surviving veterans remain
Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press
By Kyle Duggan, November 11, 2025
Eighty years after the end of the deadliest conflict in history, the number of living Second World War veterans has dwindled to a few thousand.
Veterans Affairs Canada said it estimates that as of this year, there are 3,691 surviving Canadian veterans — 667 women and 3,024 men.
Veterans Affairs also believes the number of living veterans from the Korean War is 1,909. Previously, it did not separate the numbers from the two wars under the government’s War Service Veteran population statistics, saying in 2024 it believed there were some 7,300.
“The events of the Second World War are very rapidly moving from the realm of lived history of people you can talk to about these events into history, where you can’t talk to the people who remember them,” said Jeff Noakes, Second World War historian at the Canadian War Museum.
From the horrors of bloody D-Day battlefield combat on the beaches of France’s Normandy to returning home to post-war economic uncertainty and a national housing shortage, the stories live on, but there are fewer and fewer chances to access the memories and stories of those who lived it.
“Even if you were five years old, when the war ended, you’d be 85 now. So it’s this big shift from knowing a neighbour or a family member or somebody you could talk to about this into … moving out of the experience of lived history.”
On top of military conflict, Canadians would have endured rationing, government control over information and other restrictions of freedoms under the War Measures Act, and internment of Japanese, Italian and other Canadians seen as a threat at the time.
The War Museum has collected interviews with some of the last remaining veterans and their families, currently on display in the national capital as a special exhibition, called “Last Voices of the Second World War,” running through Jan. 18.
The war took place from 1939 to 1945, with more than 45,000 service members giving their lives and upward of 55,000 suffering wounds fighting Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and shaping the global order to come.
This Remembrance Day marks eight decades after conclusion of the major conflict, which ended in Europe on May 8, 1945, and in the Pacific on Aug. 15.
At this year’s national ceremony, in a rare turn of events, Chief Justice Richard Wagner will be filling in for Gov. Gen. Mary Simon.
Simon is unable to attend as she recovers in hospital from a respiratory virus, Rideau Hall said late Monday.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jennie Carignan, Veterans Affairs Minister Jill McKnight and other dignitaries will attend the ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.
This year’s National Silver Cross Mother, Nancy Payne, whose son was killed in Afghanistan in 2006, will lay a wreath on behalf of Canadian mothers who lost their children due to military service.
The federal government is looking to shine a light this Remembrance Day on the Canadian military’s activities in the Americas throughout the years.
When Lt.-Col. Carl Gauthier appeared before the Senate last week for its special ceremony of Remembrance, he told the chamber that the military’s many contributions at home and throughout the Americas reflect “our steadfast commitment to being a good neighbour and ally.”
“Canada’s veterans have always been there for us and for our neighbours, from floods in the Prairies, to storms in the Maritimes, to rescues at sea, the Halifax explosion and earthquakes in Haiti,” he said on Nov. 7.
This year also marks 25 years since the entombment of Canada’s Unknown Soldier, a tribute to a fallen First World War soldier who remains unidentified. It commemorates the more than 118,000 Canadians who have sacrificed their lives in service to their country.