Friday, May 7, 2010

Rememberance Day in the Netherlands

Being in Canada right now, the one thing I am missing is the remembrance celebrations in the Netherlands and especially in my city, Zutphen. May 4th was Remembrance day and May 5th was Liberation day.  In that time there is many celebrations taking place through out the whole country.  This year there was much drama included in the remembrance celebrations in Amsterdam including someone who thought it was funny to yell "BOMB" during the 2 minute of silence on Dam Square and during the Liberation festival in Zwolle they had to close the gates because of the huge mass of people attending the celebration which included many music bands.
Many Canadian and British war veterans were attending festivities in Zutphen this year for the Remembrance and Liberation celebrations this year. One of the reasons being is because of the opening of the bridge in the subdivision Leesten which has many streets named after Canadian war veterans (I previously blogged about this).  I know the article is unreadable to many, but there are many beautiful pictures from the opening of the bridge at this site. The article basically translates to:
The Canadian Leroy Lawes (65), son of N. Lawes who was killed in action on April 4th 1945, of whome the bridge is named after, passed away in his hotel from a heart attack the night before the opening ceremonies of the bridge. Leroy Lawes was going to officially open the bridge.
The openings ceremony was carried out through his niece Debbie Lawes and the Zutphens Mayer Arnold Gerritsen.  Many Canadian veterans were present. 

Another beautiful remembrance ceremony for the Canadian and British veterans took place in one of  Zutphens most beautiful churches and some of that can be seen in the clip below.




On a side note: I am really enjoying my trip back home in Canada.  Now that my Dutch has almost left most of my sentence structures I will have to turn around and return to the Netherlands next week and be home for Hemelvaartsdag (Ascensions day which is Thursday).