The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month

A remarkable vigil to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the World War I armistice will be held across Canada and in London, England. God Save the Queen:

The Queen will take part in a unique Canadian Remembrance Day ceremony in London next week to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War, Buckingham Palace announced yesterday.

The Queen and Prince Philip will participate at an evening event Nov. 4 at Canada House, the Canadian High Commission building in Trafalgar Square.

A huge projector will display, in sequence, over seven straight evenings leading up to Remembrance Day on Nov. 11, the names of Canada's 68,000 war dead on the building's walls.

The same spectacle will begin several hours later as night falls in Canada, starting in Atlantic Canada and moving gradually from east to west.

The main Canadian display will be at the National War Memorial near Parliament Hill, although official vigils using the technology will also be held in Fredericton, Halifax, Toronto, Regina and Edmonton.

The project is the brainchild of Canadian actor R.H. Thomson and lighting designer Martin Conboy, and is intended to symbolically "repatriate" the bodies of the war dead who, by law, had to be buried in Europe.

Its other goal is to remember on an individual basis the dead who, for 89 years, have been remembered collectively during Remembrance Day ceremonies.

Mr. Thomson said he didn't expect when the project was launched that it would get the Queen's support, and he hopes the news will prompt schools, historical societies, community groups and Royal Canadian Legion branches to acquire the software to hold their own smaller-scale vigils.

He noted that the Queen was born in 1926, eight years after the end of a devastating four-year war.

"I'm actually quite cognizant of her interest of the men in that generation who died in the millions," Mr. Thomson, 61, said. "Her generation understands the size of that loss. Her generation gets it. Her father and her grandfathers must have talked a lot about it.

"My generation and the generation underneath me don't quite get it."

Veterans Affairs Canada contributed $340,000 to pay for the production of the National War Memorial vigil, the simultaneous webcast of the event, and the co-ordination of vigils in the other cities that were funded by local and private sector sources.

Canadians can look up the names of relatives who died during the war and determine the exact moment when their names will be displayed during the live broadcast from Ottawa by going to www.1914-1918.ca.

Community groups that want to take part in vigil activities in the cities involved or acquire the projection software package for smaller vigils can contact Canada's National History Society through www.historysociety.ca [more here on Remembrance Day in general].

From the Vigil website--note there will be live streaming:

Vigil On this page you will see the Ottawa National Vigil streamed live from the National War Memorial. It will run for seven nights, starting at 5:00pm each evening. The first name appears at 5:15pm. Each night’s vigil will be 13 hours long, ending at sunrise the following day. The vigil will then recommence at 5:00pm and run another 13 hours. The last name will appear as dawn breaks on November 11th.

The Names The vigil will commence November 4th 2008. More than 9,700 names will appear each night. Each individual name will appear only once during the seven nights. These include those killed in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, the Canadian Merchant Navy and the Canadian Army Medical Corps.

Searching The Names To find the exact night and time when a specific name will appear, use the Search Names tab located at the top of this page. The names appearing in the vigil will have no order or ranking. Each man or woman was equal in death.

Vigil Locations This vigil is also taking place in other Canadian cities and in London, England. You can access these by using the Time Zones or London tabs located above. We encourage you to attend in person or to view the simultaneous vigil presentations created on each region’s webpage.

Time Zones This vigil is being presented across 9 time zones. Bear in mind the time difference when attending a vigil in your city. For example the Ottawa National vigil will commence 5 hours after the London International vigil. The Regina vigil will start 1 hour after Ottawa. But wherever you live, the vigil will commence at 5:00pm local time.

Educational Opportunities The History Society is helping to organize local schools and community groups to animate all of the vigil sites. If you are interested in participating in the vigil go to www.historysociety.ca/vigil . Teachers are encouraged to explore the educational resources available for classes at the website.

Memory is part of what makes us human.

Lest we forget.