An online petition calling for a state funeral for the last veteran of the First World War passed the 43,000-signature mark Friday and is rising by the hour, organizers said.
The Dominion Institute hopes to have 50,000 signatures before Remembrance Day ceremonies on Saturday.
First World War veteran gunner Percy Dwight Wilson, 105, waves goodbye following a media availability in the veteran's wing at Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto last week.
(Frank Gunn/Canadian Press)
Rudyard Griffiths, the institute's director, said the death of the last veteran of the Great War will be a "watershed moment" for the country and should be front and centre for all Canadians.
Of the 619,636 Canadians who served in the First World War, three are still alive: Percy Dwight Wilson, 105, and Lloyd Clemett and John Babcock, both 106.
"When that last veteran dies, when the living link is severed between one of the defining events in our country's history and who we are as a country today, will we still remember?" Griffiths asked.
He said the need for this type of big gesture is highlighted by results from an annual quiz the institute releases each year.
More modern Canadian history classes needed: Griffiths
Of the 1,000 Canadians who answered this year's four question quiz on the First World War, 42 per cent passed, the institute said.
Twenty-five per cent said U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was a Canadian war hero, while 30 per cent were able to identify flying ace Billy Bishop and General Sir Arthur Currie as Canadians.
Griffiths said modern Canadian history should be required in classrooms across the country.
"Only four provinces require high school students to take a chronological 20th century history course," he said. "If you don’t teach it, kids ain't gonna learn it."
"I think that's what's happening."
Related
Internal Links
External Links
(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window)
More Canada Headlines »
- Guilty verdicts read at N.B. vigilante justice trial
- A jury has convicted four of five men charged in connection with a riot that included the burning of what some on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick called a crack house.
- 12th person dies of C. difficile at Quebec hospital
- Twelve people have died of the treatment-resistant C. difficile bacterium at Honoré-Mercier hospital in St. Hyacinthe, Que., since September.
- Boil-water warning lifted for 1 million in Greater Vancouver
- The Greater Vancouver Regional District has lifted the boil-water advisory for about half the population of the Lower Mainland.
- Tens of thousands still in the dark in B.C.
- About 32,000 B.C. homes and businesses from Vancouver Island to Chilliwack were still without power Friday in the aftermath of the huge storm that hammered the South Coast on Wednesday.
- Child killed in dog attack on northern Alberta reserve
- A five-year-old boy was mauled to death by as many as five dogs. "It's quite a tragic event - a horrible way for a young fellow to have ended his life," says Sgt. Ryan Becker.
