Remembering the fallen — gratefully

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/11/2023 (669 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Every now and then I want you to know precisely when I’m writing this column, my personal letter to Manitobans. It is 4:30 on Thursday morning. Because Saturday is Remembrance Day, the weekend edition is being published on Friday. My deadline as always is one day before publication. Now, 4:30 a.m. is an early start for many. But I also owe you the knowledge that I poured my first cup of coffee at 2:30 a.m.

I rarely sleep more than four hours a night, and it’s just as rare for me to sleep for an entire hour without rising from the bed, chair, couch or rug. It would be easy to rhetorically quiet the nocturnal noise by declaring that nature frequently knocks on sleep’s door. But that would be a long prairie drive from a town we call Truth.

It’s not poor plumbing that’s keeping this writer awake. In professional sport, teams refer to injuries as upper or lower body. I could tell you that my frequently interrupted sleep is a lower body thing. But it is not. The intruder is a sadistic prison guard living in the upper part.

Many reading this, are undoubtedly recalling that getting up in the middle of the night became a regular thing, once they hit middle age.

But the truth is I was waking up frequently as a toddler, growing up in a dangerous land that my parents fled. Fortunately for me, I was carried out of danger on my father’s back. Backpacks are safety blankets for me. I own several. I was smuggled out of Hungary in a backpack.

But months later I was able to stand on my own two feet unconcealed when I was allowed into the Adler family’s promised land, Canada.

It’s impossible to be tapping the computer keyboard so close to Remembrance Day, without remembering my Grandmother Elizabeth’s admonition.

She regularly reminded me that in my public life I needed to show gratitude to all Canadians who served in our armed forces and all their families and neighbours for supporting their service. Without Canada and her allies, I never would have met my maternal grandmother. And I would never have been alive, to deliver this message to Canadian veterans.

On behalf of my family, thank you for serving a good country and a great cause. Without you, the Adler family, which was marked for death by the forces of fascism, would have been liquidated.

Too many members of my extended family, like my paternal grandmother and grandfather were consumed by a dictator’s oven. But because of the sacrifices of Canada and her allies some of us were spared. Thank you, Canadians.

I don’t imagine too many reading this Remembrance Day column are still wondering what it is that has been interrupting my sleep.

In the life that I call my own, every day is Remembrance Day. On many a night , if not every night, the brain is bombarded by events that took place a decade before I was born. Ten summers before my birth, my paternal grandparents were herded into a cattle car bound for Auschwitz.

In these pages this week Dr. Joss Reimer, the chief medical officer of the WRHA and president of the Canadian Medical Association, discussed her lifelong battle with depression.

If you missed her Free Press interview, please take a look. I read it several times before my fingers felt a keyboard 48 hours before Remembrance Day.

High-profile health official Dr. Joss Reimer opens up about her mental-health challenges

Dr. Reimer’s courage to go public with her mental health history, has inspired me to discuss morsels of my own. Based on the conversation she had with one of our finest journalists, Kevin Rollason, Dr. Reimer knows that when public people speak about private things, it can encourage others to get the help they need for what is keeping them awake when others are sleeping, and prevents them from feeling joy when others are celebrating.

Dr. Reimer, I know you 100 per cent get what I’m about to reveal. Many others suffering in silence will also understand.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

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There are many nights when I dream of being a young man with a shovel in hand, digging a grave for myself in a military cemetery in Northern France. It’s one of the neighbourhoods where my thoughts sleep with eyes open.

On the eve of Remembrance Day, that is where my heart is — with the tombs of my heroes, Canada’s fallen.

Thank you for sacrificing your lives so that others could have theirs, giving life to future generations of Canadians.

Lest We Forget.

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. charles@charlesadler.com