Remembering our veterans

*this story is something I wrote last year but wanted to share. Lest we forget.

Quiet tears stained the faces of people at the Remembrance Day ceremony at Bruce Park on Portage Avenue yesterday.

As the parade of service men and women, family members of fallen solders and Girl Guides and Scouts of Canada made their way onto the grounds from Portage Avenue not a sound came from the crowd except the cries of a young child.

The service began with the singing of ‘O Canada’, and the flag that began resting at half-mast slowly made its way to the top.

The crowd this year was bigger than Muriel Barton has seen in awhile.

“We usually get over 1,000 people, but today because of the beautiful weather there was more,” said Barton, who has been involved with the St. James Legion branch number four for over 25 years.  “I handed out around 700 programs, on top of the 700 my husband Bruce handed out, and there was still a lot of people that didn’t have one.”

After the opening prayer by chaplain Captain Gordon Mintz, Major Brian Slous read a somber thank-you to the veterans of the First and Second World Wars and a heartfelt message to the men and women serving in Afghanistan.

As the Canadian flag once again descended to half-mast during the Last Post, a young boy holding a portrait of a family member killed in Afghanistan buried his face into the arms of his silent family.

At 11 a.m. for two minutes not a word was spoken as the crowd silently thanked the men and women who put their lives on the line so that Canadians would never have to experience war at home.

Near the end of the ceremony, wreaths were placed on the war memorial that read, ‘Their names live on forever’.   MP Pat Martin, representing the Government of Canada, laid a wreath in memory for all those who sacrificed their lives.  MLA Bonnie Korzeniowski laid a wreath for the province, and Councilor Scott Fielding presented one for the city.

With the sun shinning bright, the solders gave their final salute and began the parade down Portage Avenue.

Editing my habits

The other day I was asked to do a survey regarding my drinking habits. Now you may be thinking the survey was just asking about my “drinking” habits, but it included how much coffee, water, pop and alcohol I consume. So I was pretty honest about most things, but when I got to the section about how many servings of alcohol I may drink each week I really had to think about my answers.


This is another form of editing. While I don’t have any “issues” with alcohol, I still wanted to lower the number of servings. I edited my habits to so that the person on the other end of the survey didn’t send me an email with a link to AFM – even if the survey was anonymous. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to rack up the number of servings of alcohol you consume each week.

Canada's big PR issue the Russell Williams' case

Over thinking headlines

Part of this week’s headline assignment was to revise two of our own headlines from our blogs.  Picking the bad headlines I wrote wasn’t hard, but I did find it challenging to revise them.  I knew what I hated about my headlines, but it was difficult to figure out what was the best way to fix them.

The Canadian Press Stylebook provides a lot of useful information when writing a headline, but it can also be very daunting.  The Stylebook says to be specific; give enough information about the story but don’t give it all away; use strong verbs, and the list goes on.  But as I struggled to revise my headlines I tried to keep all these “rules” in mind, and come up with headlines I would find interesting but that a larger audience would also understand.

After working on this assignment, I realized how very important headlines are in the editing process.  Not only does it sum up the basis of the story, but it also gets people interested in the story and the newspaper, website, journal or whatever as a whole.  A headline is what sells, and if the headline editor doesn’t get it right people won’t be interested in reading what the publication has to say.