Description
Mr. Finestone describes the significance that November eleventh has for him.
Bernard J. Finestone
Mr. Finestone was born in Sacramento, California, and moved to Montreal when he was ten months old. His father served with the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery during the First World War. Mr. Finestone joined the COTC while he was studying at McGill University and when the war broke out he was in officer training. Mr. Finestone served as a tank commander in Italy and during the Italian Campaign, he was severely wounded. Mr. Finestone is an active speaker. He speaks to young Canadians about his military experiences and being a Jewish veteran.
Transcript
On a personal basis, my father was in Siberia until 1919. He wasn’t in Europe at all and it’s a war I wasn’t in. So, the actual day hasn’t got the significance to me that it would have the families who lost people there. But it doesn’t matter what day it is. That’s the day that we take to remember people who died in World War I, World War II, who died in Korea, who died in Bosnia, and I’ve just been reading in a magazine of the ones that we lost in Croatia. I mean, Canadians, our government doesn’t think we’re a military country but our people sure are good soldiers, I’ll tell you. We never send people over there that don’t come back without presidential citations and the most flattering of comments, for one reason only. For reasons I know not, we are very good soldiers. And all that has to be remembered. You can put around November 11th, you can pick any day you like, I don’t care. But it is very good that once a year, everybody stops, and I understand that this year, the CP stopped every train at 11 o’clock. That got me here. I thought that was great.