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.

The Queen attends Candian vigil for 90th anniversary of World War I armistice

Further to this post, the Queen at Canada House, London (video here):

The Queen kicked off a trans-Atlantic tribute in London on Tuesday honouring Canada's war dead from the First World War.

She and the Duke of Edinburgh were among those who helped launch the international debut of "Vigile 1914-1918 Vigil." The vigil is an electronic tribute to fallen soldiers featuring a nightly display of the names of soldiers who died in battle.

The names were projected on to the outer wall of Canada House Tuesday, along with the images of the soldiers. The display will run from dusk until dawn through Remembrance Day on Nov. 11.

"Long may we all remember the multitude of Canadians, and indeed all of those who laid down their lives to defend the lives of others," the Queen told a crowd gathered at Canada House, before greeting Canadian veterans, including those who have fought in Afghanistan.

As darkness fell and the ceremony began, a lone bugler played "The Last Post."

School children then read aloud several poems, including "In Flanders Fields" by Canadian soldier and poet John McCrae.

Jim Wright, Canada's high commissioner to Britain, said the tribute was an emotional experience.

"It was extremely moving watching the names scroll down very slowly ... there was absolute silence," Wright said.

"It was a passing of a generation from veterans to the youth of today."

Wright explained that "Vigile 1914-1918 Vigil" begins in London and then makes its way west in order to commemorate the very same journey that was made by fallen Canadians when their bodies were repatriated.

The tribute has also moved westward, across the Atlantic, with similar vigils being planned for Halifax, Fredericton, Ottawa, Toronto, Regina and Edmonton.

In Halifax, the names were projected on to a wall of the city's oldest church.

Tom Gillis told CTV Atlantic he is honoured to see the names of four of his relatives included in the tribute.

"They're all going to be up there this week and I'm going to be here at two in the morning or three in the morning and take pictures of their names," he said.

In Toronto, the names were projected on to the east tower of City Hall late Tuesday night, as politicians, soldiers, and civilians honoured those who sacrificed their lives for Canada.

Mayor David Miller told the crowd Canadians can't do enough to honour those who "never returned from fighting those conflicts so we might live in peace and freedom."

The tribute will continue in the other Canadian cities every night until next Tuesday.

The high-tech commemoration was the brainchild of actor R. H. Thomson and lighting designer Martin Conboy. They raised money for the tribute with the help of Canada's National History Society.

About 68,000 Canadians died in the First World War.

"Etched in light..."

What a touching, classy effort:

The National War Memorial will be the scene of a unique and emotional nighttime vigil starting at sunset on Easter Sunday.

As tens of thousands of Canadians journey to France on the Easter weekend to witness the Queen re-dedicate the restored Vimy Memorial, the federal government is hoping thousands more will gather in downtown Ottawa for a ceremony to mark the 90th anniversary of the Canadian victory in France.

At 7:30 p.m. on April 8, the lights in the area surrounding the National War Memorial will be turned off, and an overnight vigil will be held in honour of the Canadians who fought in the four-day battle that began on Easter Monday, 1917.

The names of the 3,598 Canadians who died at Vimy Ridge will be "etched in light," projected on to the walls of the memorial until sunrise the next morning.

The photographs of at least 80 Vimy veterans who survived the battle, but are now deceased, will also be projected on the memorial's walls.

A hearty Bravo Zulu to R.H. Thomson and those who have helped him turn this moment of inspiration into a reality. I just wish I was in Ottawa to join in.

The Vimy vigil in Ottawa

The website is here (h/t to David Frum).

Maritime surveillance: What the expanded NORAD will build on

Marine Security Operations Centres will an important Canadian contribution.

Best-known for tracking the skies for Soviet bombers, NORAD has a new responsibility: the oceans: Canada and the U.S. worry about terrorist threats along the coasts...

It's 8 a.m. on a weekday and representatives from Canada's front-line security agencies have huddled in the navy's Pacific headquarters at Esquimalt, B.C., to discuss looming threats confronting the country.

The object of their interest? Ships. Some 500 of them found in the waters off Canada's west coast at any given time — fishing boats, passenger ferries and mammoth cargo ships laden with containers that move the world's commerce...

And a nondescript office building at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt promises to be the new front line for the decades-old defence alliance that once protected the continent from the threat of Soviet bombers. This building houses a marine security operations centre, one of two in Canada...

Each weekday morning, representatives from National Defence, Transport Canada, the RCMP, the CBSA, the Coast Guard and the fisheries department gather at the operations centre to discuss the possible threats...

Another team does the same job in Halifax for the Atlantic Ocean and eastern Arctic. At any given time, the two centres are monitoring some 1,000 ships of all sizes.

(A third centre, overseen by the RCMP and likely to be built somewhere in the Niagara Region, will keep vigil over the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway, which were actually flagged by the Senate defence committee as having the "greatest potential for terrorist activities.")..

The new emphasis on maritime security comes almost three years after the Senate defence committee sounded the alarm about Canada's unguarded coastlines, warning "they are vast, they are vulnerable, and, unfortunately, they are largely unattended."..