I, like many Canadians, had family that both served and observed the Second World War. As a child I was entertained by my father’s stories of how, as a young boy, he would watch the Japanese bomb Calcutta. On the other hand, my great uncles, who returned from the war to become alcoholics primarily because of their experiences overseas, never spoke of it. Nor did my own grandfather, who served in the Royal Air Force, like to indulge me when I was too young and stupid to differentiate between the childish fancy of war and its reality.

The last truly global war ended in 1945. At its conclusion, five nations stood as victors, the same five that are now the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and are responsible for 88% of the world’s conventional arms exports. Among them are the two preeminent nuclear powers that, following the Second World War, spent decades locked in an ideological struggle that created the largest and most dangerous arms race in human history and produced a series of proxy wars in a variety of locations throughout the world that took the lives of millions of people. Conflicts that, of course, did not stop them from selling arms to those they championed and, in some cases, both sides.

Were you to tell a foot soldier trying not to vomit from a mixture of sea sickness and sheer terror crossing the Channel on the 6th of June, 1944, that, even though the Third Reich would be defeated a year later, the legacy of that struggle, and the deaths of his friends, would not be just a part of the foundation, but celebration, of a permanent global arms industry – what do you think he would say?

Despite the humility and reverence that we reserve for this day each year, the truth is that the two great wars of the last century, three if you include the Cold War, did nothing to promote the peaceful coexistence of nations and peoples. If anything, despite the sacrifices made by those courageous enough to believe something better possible at the outcome of hostilities, the very principles and freedoms that those individuals fought to protect have been either endangered or altogether lost by the sheer magnitude of our perpetual love affair with destruction. In the name of security we have become slaves to the very thing that was initially struggled against – aggression. And in doing so, no matter the observance of this day, have disgraced the memories of all those that fought to preserve a notion of liberty that did not require the rifle nor cannon to mar its landscape.