By Scott Roblin

Remembrance Day a chance to reflect for remaining World War II veterans

Nov 11, 2018 | 9:06 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Like many Canadians across the country, people in Medicine Hat paused to pay tribute and remember on Sunday.

Hundreds gathered at the Esplanade and at the cenotaph downtown for this year’s Remembrance Day ceremony.

Special attention was paid towards the First World War this year, as Sunday at 11:00 am marked the 100th anniversary of the armistice.

No soldiers remain from that battle, but a handful of World War II veterans were on hand including 91-year-old Mollie Patricia-Webster.

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Still a teenager when the war began in her native Great Britain, she served five years with the British Royal Navy during wartime.

Patricia-Webster said it was a trying time for all those involved with the war effort and makes a point of remembering those who didn’t come home.

“For those who were so young to lose their lives,” said Patricia-Webster. “For those who remember them in the loss of their son or their husband. Terrible to lose your child in a battle.”

She added one memory sticks out in her mind from those five years, when she and thousands of other Brits greeted prisoners of war returning home in 1945.

“Everybody was there at the harbour to see the ship come in and there was decorations everywhere,” she said. “And then when we saw them, they were in such terrible conditions. Our boys had been prisoners and the Japanese had been terribly, terribly cruel and they had to go straight to hospital.”

In her fifties, Patricia-Webster moved to Medicine Hat and earned her Canadian citizenship in the process.

Although she has since moved back to England, she makes a point of returning to the ‘Gas City’ every year, usually around Remembrance Day.

She added if one thing can be passed on to the younger generation from those who served their countries, it would be discipline in all aspects of life.

“How could you go into a battle or be in a spitfire fighter if you didn’t have discipline, after all we were very young,” she said. “I think that’s possibly what’s missing.”

Following the completion of the outdoor ceremony at the cenotaph, onlookers gathered around the monument to lay down their poppies on top of the dozens of wreaths laid by local groups.