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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
As history's great wars are relegated to the increasingly distant past, and as each year ushers in the deaths of more and more veterans, the face of Remembrance Day changes.

Douglas "Dusty" Miller, 92, is one of Yellowknife's last living Second World War veterans, having served as an aircraft technician with the Royal Canadian Air Force. For him the importance of Remembrance Day lies in commemorating fallen soldiers. "We don't want to forget those people that didn't make it," he said. "They were true and blue and one of us." - Galit Rodan/NNSL photo

One day, in the not-too-distant future, there will be only second-hand memories. We will no longer be able to look into the eyes of veterans who served in those wars or hear their stories in their own words, their own voices. We won't be able to ask them questions.

How, then, to honour the vow "Lest we forget?"

For St. Patrick high school teacher Loralea Wark, remembering is revisiting. For the past four years, Wark has been taking students on a tour of battlefields where Canadians fought and died. The students on the March 2012 trip will stop in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany and will visit Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Dunkirk, Anne Frank's house, the Dachau concentration camp and

Nuremberg, among others.

Wark said the trip has had the desired impact.

"I still get e-mails, actually, from students who have graduated and who have been on the trip. Every year on Remembrance Day I can be guaranteed to get a handful saying 'I'm going to the Remembrance Day service here because I can't stay home today knowing what I know.' So they've taken it into their own lives and have personalized it ... you can't walk into a cemetery and see 5,000, 8,000, 14,000 headstones and not be affected by that."

In order to be eligible, however, students must first complete Wark's Canadian war history course, which entails spending about an hour and a half in class after school each Wednesday. Staying at school until after 5 p.m. once a week is certainly not a typical teenage choice. But 37 students have opted to do so this year.

For Dominique Jure, 15, the class is more than just a prerequisite. "We're learning about what we're going to go see and the real impact of the places we're going to be standing at, as opposed to just - 'Oh, cool, this is part of World War Two.' We know what happened there and we know the magnitude of it," she said. Neither Jure nor classmate Pascal Erasmus, 16, have ever met a veteran of the First or Second World War but they commemorate their sacrifices nonetheless.

"It is important to make new generations remember because if we forget history can repeat itself," said Jure.

For Erasmus, "Lest we forget" is a call to "honour and remember all those who died in the wars that we had. If those wars didn't happen, everything here today would be changed," he said.

Wark's class is also helping Francine Clouston set up the high school gym for the Remembrance Day service that follows Friday's parade. Clouston, the first vice-president of the Royal Canadian Legion branch in Yellowknife and a former officer with the army cadet corps, has helped organize the city's Remembrance Day ceremony for the past 16 years. Clouston said that keeping children involved in the ceremony is one way of ensuring that the torch is passed down through the ages.

Clouston also rightly pointed out that there is a whole new generation of veterans - those who have served on peacekeeping missions and in Afghanistan - to reach out to youth and ensure the message of Remembrance Day lives on. Wreath layings, candle lightings, cenotaph vigils and minutes of silence all become part of tradition and memory for those who don't have memories of their own to carry.

Douglas "Dusty" Miller does not belong to that fortunate group - the ones who have grown up free, for the most part, from the shadow of war. Miller, who is 92 years old and one of the last remaining Second World War veterans living in Yellowknife, is one of the ones who made that freedom possible.

"Lest we forget" has special meaning for him after losing friends and comrades during his time of service. "If a man is lost in battle we don't just put his name on a piece of cement and forget it," said Miller. "He remains one of the items that make Canada great."

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