Ahead of Nov. 11, the St. Michaels University School community gathered in solemn reflection for our annual Remembrance Day Services. Together, students, staff and guests from across all campuses paused to honour those who have served and sacrificed in times of conflict — including the 134 students and faculty from our founding schools who gave their lives in the First and Second World Wars.
The ceremonies invited the audience to move beyond the noise of daily life and find meaning in silence — a silence that unites us in remembrance and gratitude for the peace we are privileged to share today.
Below, you can read the opening words from the Middle and Senior School Service, and watch the recording of the ceremony.
Remembrance Day 2025
Opening Words
So many voices. So much emotion.
Competing visions. Conflicting values.
These realities of our nature are very much on our minds as of late.
A discordant cacophony of human sound.
Each of us hears it from a specific perspective,
shaped by our own experiences and understandings.
It can all become…deafening.
How different from this gathering,
which finds its centrepoint — its culminating moment — in silence.
We gather in a room filled with an array of people who span the globe,
representing different cultures and religions and philosophies and political viewpoints.
We have a lot to say.
But instead, we will stand in silence…and remember.
We will remember what it means for our differences to define us,
what it means when our political processes spin out of control,
and, more than anything else,
we will remember those who lost their lives because of it.
Before we come to that silence,
I invite you to set aside the all-consuming clamour “out there”,
making room to hear a different set of voices:
those of people from all nations who died in the wars.
Hear their voices through the words of our own Captain Harvey,
and as the names of our Alumni are read aloud.
Hear them through the notes of an Adagio,
and in our Choir’s invitation
that we join together, take each others’ hands,
and walk the dusty road to a place where walls melt away — a place of peace.
May it be this collection of voices that prepares us for a silence,
that remembers those who died
because others couldn’t find their way.
Closing Words
In a moment, we will leave this place
and we know what is waiting for us.
All those voices. All those emotions.
The competing visions. The conflicting values.
Given this reality,
may we exit the doors armed with the silence we have shared together,
the kind of silence that informs our thinking,
clarifies our values, and, ultimately, strengthens our voice.
We have marked the silence. Now it is time to share our voice.
May we indeed join together and may the walls melt away.
Go in peace. Vivat!
