We Remember Them
On the wall by the Huron doors hang memorial plaques. They weren't always there. For decades, they graced the entranceway of 371 Bloor Street. But they are ours, and being ours, we brought them here to our new home, where they serve as a reminder of lives lost during World War I and World War II. Each name represents a life – a UTS student or teacher or staff member – a life lived and a life lost.
It's hard for the meaning behind days like today not to feel distant and removed – an academic exercise in history – because for most of us, though not all of us, the thread connecting those events to our lives today grows more fragile with time.
Every year on this day, I think of my grandfather, Albert Edward Foster. (He's the one on the right.) Bert, as he was called, was born in Bristol, England in 1904 and moved to the United States as a boy. Everyone who knew him remembers that he always "stood up for the little guy" – something I found ironic given his own small stature. But he was a fighter and spent his life working to protect the rights of others. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, he fought to organize workers in the Michigan and Ohio automobile industries, becoming one of the founding members of the United Autoworkers Union. It was violent and often bloody work.
In 1939, when Germany declared war on England, Bert took his fight elsewhere, travelling to Toronto with his three brothers to join the Canadian war effort. My grandfather enlisted in the 48th Highlanders that fall, telling his wife and two small children that he’d surely be home within six months.
Six years later, and against the odds, all four Foster brothers returned home from the war. My own father, a young boy, remembers waiting with excitement for his dad’s return. Like many children at that time, he had romanticized ideas of war. My dad couldn’t wait to hear about tales of bravery and battles in the south of Italy and on the beaches of France. He was sure his father would bring home stories that would make any young son proud.
But the man who came home was not the man who left. As with many veterans, angry outbursts, nightmares and insomnia became part of everyday life. Bert refused to talk about the war. Any attempt to ask him even the simplest question would be met with a sharp rebuke, then silence. Like so many who fought, the price of war was invisible but ever present. What remained of Bert, however, was his bel
ief in standing up for what was right. He returned to his work in the union, throwing himself back into that fight – one he still believed in.
My grandfather's decision to defend his country wasn't made lightly. It wasn't made without consequences. Thousands of lives were lost, both civilian and soldier. And while my grandfather survived, parts of him did not.
War is never something to be wished for. It extracts a price that extends far beyond the battlefield – a price paid not just by those who serve, but by their families, their communities and by the generations that follow. Yet despite the trauma he carried, my grandfather never stopped standing up for others. He never stopped believing that some things were worth fighting for.
I think the best way I can honor my grandfather’s sacrifice – and the sacrifice of every name on those plaques – is to carry forward that same conviction, but to direct it toward a different end: ensuring that war never happens again. To stand up for others, yes. To fight for what's right, absolutely. But to do so in ways that build bridges instead of trenches, that choose dialogue over destruction, and that protect the vulnerable without creating new victims.
That is the lesson I take from Remembrance Day. We remember not to glorify war, but to understand its true cost. We remember so that we might choose differently. We remember so that the names on those plaques – so that my grandfather's generation – did not sacrifice in vain.
Today, we will remember them.
