We gathered in the Main Firehall, some 40 men of all ages, from our 20's to our 70's. But this was not like our Monday night practises, where the chairs are usually set out in rows. When I arrive normally black metal music stands are being hefted from their racks in the furnace room and arranged in the expected places.

Today we were going to play as we march and the rest of the time we would be standing outside as we play. So we will practise standing in our section rows. Reading our music from our "lyres".

Music is being passed out, small hand-sized pieces of march music which anyone who has played in a marching band will recognize by size and shape.

The music is designed for a "lyre" - a small clamping metal device which fits ingeniously somewhere on each instrument.

Marilyn reminded me that, when I played in a band in Germany, I used a clothespin to clip the music to the back of the tunic of the player ahead of me. I could hardly believe I was so casual! Then, I was a graduate student living with my family on a very limited budget. Now, I can afford to buy a lyre.

This rainy day we will be the official band for the Remembrance Day Service at the Cenotaph in Vancouver. The Cenotaph stands in the centre of Victory Square on Hastings and Cambie streets - in what used to be the centre of Vancouver.

Ken tries to call us together but we, men of age and experience who should know better, continue to talk together and ignore him until just before his anger reaches its boiling point. We come to attention.

The music is familiar - "O Canada" and "God Save the Queen". "Land of Hope and Glory" by Elgar. And marches - did we have marches! Ken, our leader, has a passion for marches - John Philip Sousa and Kenneth J. Alford. Alford's "Colonel Bogey" seems to be the band's favourite march.

Ken had found composers I had never heard of before - from Holland and Scandinavia. Where does he get all these marches? And all the marches are written in high ranges I haven't played for years. When you venture above high "C" on the clarinet you are into "false fingering" which is quite intricate. A person can go through a whole mediocre career on the clarinet without getting involved much higher than high "C". Of course most of us have heard those records of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw in which they danced through those high notes, clearly and effortlessly. But we are not Benny or Artie!

Now we were introduced to "Igor", our Drum-Major, who will be walking at the front of the band - with a beautiful red sash, and a long silver rod. With all of two months experience in this band I am learning a lot of new things.

There will be a kind of military precision demanded of us this day. Ken and Igor are demonstrating for us the special double beat on the bass drum. When we hear this signal we are warned to stop playing at the end of the phrase and simply march to the 16- bar "drum cadence". The bass drummer demonstrates the "Sound Off" - the special two bars on the drums which signal players to raise their instruments to begin playing the next number. We practice "Colonel Bogey", "Heart of Oak", and two regimental marches for the Canadian Rifles and the Canadian Army Medical Corps.

My heart jumps a beat. Marilyn's Father, Jim Miller, was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Canadian Army Medical Corps. Jim served in England, and was away from their home for an important four years in their family life. The last memory which one child had of Jim was a good spanking she received just before he embarked. It was only four years later that Jim was able to take that child in his arms and remedy that memory.

George Shoebotham was in the ambulance corps. Just last Sunday George had set up a display of fire and ambulance equipment at the front of our Church for our regular Remembrance Day service.

It is thrilling to play a stirring march in the midst of a good band. It is a subjective experience which any bandsperson will know. You are surrounded by the music, your body throbs to the deep vibrations of bass drum and trombone. Your ears hurt a bit. Altogether delightful! Marches were born in wartime. They have everything to do with Men going to War. It was far easier to march into a bloody battle, even to lay down your life, if you had that Martial Music ringing in your ears, coursing through your veins, stiffening your spine.

My back is straightening, spine stiffening as I play.

Now Ken is showing us a signal which we find later has a confusing double meaning. Ken whirls his fingers in the air, by which signal he meant either:

"Go back to the beginning of this number and start over!"

or: "Turn your music over to the next number!"

We are on the Fireman's Bus and heading for Victory Square. We straggle out the bus, this non-homogeneous group called the "Firemen's Band". Many are real firemen playing in their spare time, some are professional musicians, some are semi-professional musicians, and some are musical hobbyists like me.

But, today we are all Firemen!

The Pipe Band has arrived before us. We are flanked by a row of Mounties in their red tunics - be still my heart! There is one female Mountie in their ranks.

"Straighten up, men!", I advise myself. "Today we are supposed to be a Band - live up to our Uniforms!"

We all have dark blue Uniforms, much like police uniforms, with the special peaked hat and all. A white braid loops down from one epaulet and a patch on our shoulders proclaims: "Vancouver Fire Dept. 1886." I remember that our City was born in a great fire. The first meeting of our Council in 1886 was in a tent!

I am wearing a Fireman's Uniform in my home town! When I received my Uniform I delighted in dressing up and springing it on an unsuspecting member of my family. It always got a great reaction.

Suddenly the humour of me wearing a uniform for the first time in years (How can YOU be a fireman?) changes within me. There is a new meaning to my new identification with the Firemen of my City. The Uniform and This Day link me with the past of the city of my birth like nothing else for years.

We step out of the red bus onto Cambie Street - not onto the sidewalk - onto the street! Our Band Leader and our Drum-Major shape us up into rows - rows of five abreast, with a few missing persons because that could never work out exactly.

The Trombones lead us, then Trumpets, Bass Drum and Snares, Cymbals (I was Cymbals in the 1947 Calgary Stampede Parade - the handle on the cymbals kept unwinding with the reverberations) Alto Saxes, Tenor Saxes, Piccolo right in the middle, all brought up in the rear by the Clarinets.

In the Band, as in the Army, your individual characteristics give way, under pressure of performance, to your position des- cription. I am no longer for any significant purpose: Gordon. I am a Clarinet along with Bob, who is also a Clarinet. Glenn, my life-long friend up ahead, is no longer Glenn - he is a Trumpet.

Soldiers are what they do: position, rank and serial number.

Musicians are what we play: Trombone, Trumpet, Clarinet.

Now we are expected to march and play at the same time. That is impossible! I want to cry out, "I will march or play! Take your choice! But I can't do both!"

I remember the joke about the fellow so lacking in coordination that he had trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time. Suddenly that joke strikes painfully close to home!

I am supposed to clench my bobbing mouthpiece in my mouth, and try to bring into focus the fuzzy notes of music on the lyre. It is TOO CLOSE! Even with my multi-focal glasses I can hardly read it. I rue the fact that I didn't need glasses the last time I marched to music!

I am expected read the music while I blow my clarinet and watch out for uneven pavement and keep in line with the Clarinets to my right and left and watch that I do not drift from my position directly behind Piccolo. Formerly my eyes could quickly adapt to short and long ranges. Now they want either up close or distance. And they want a lot of warning when they are to change from one to the other. This is too much - impossible.

So I stopped worrying about the music - it is far too high a range anyway, and just concentrate on not running into Piccolo. We turn the corner into Victory Square.

"Victory Square" must have been named for the Allied victory in Europe. But this little park is often described differently.

My son, David asked me, when he saw it later on TV - isn't that "Pigeon Park"? Yes, it is known as Pigeon Park because of the thousands of pigeons who are usually there, sharing this tiny park with a lot of sleeping drunks. Victory Square edges on the Skidrow area of Vancouver. The name Skidrow reminds me of the logging legacy of our city. Some of the usual occupants of "Pigeon Park" once themselves logged our forests.

We past the V. I. P. stand, to a place just south of the Cenotaph. Finally, I have time to look closely at this tall square tapering piece of granite which is the Centre of today's event. The Cenotaph. Why is it called "Cenotaph", anyway?

The Cenotaph is guarded today on each of its corners by four sentries, who are standing as if they too were chiselled out of granite. To my left is a young fellow wearing the uniform and tam of the Canadian Army, his rifle with its point resting on his toe, his head bowed. To my right is a Mountie in Red Tunic in the same pose.

Still, Stone-like figures.

Today, Victory Square looks so different than any other day. It is green and clean. All the regular inhabitants, feathered and human, have been evacuated. Neither pigeon droppings nor bagged wine bottles are anywhere in view. Busy Hastings Street is closed off. The usual squeal of tires and taxi horns are replaced today by the sound of shuffling feet.

The Square is guarded today by a veteran army with flags. Medals glisten on the shoulders of women and men. On some, the row of medals span their narrow shoulders.

We play, first, "O Canada" and then, "God Save the Queen". Now we are accompanying a beautiful female voice singing, "Land of Hope and Glory". That's England we are playing and singing about! - just as we did during the war. The last time I recall singing "Land of Hope and Glory" there was still a British Empire of which we Canadians were a proud part. Once "our flag" was Red White and Blue of the British Red Ensign. Now it has been replaced by the bicoloured Maple Leaf. But there are still Red Ensigns around the Cenotaph today.

As the strains of "Land of Hope and Glory" die out I realize they are evoking long buried emotions from deep within me.

We stand at attention for the twenty-one gun salute from far-off Stanley Park. Then we "stand easy" as the V.I.P's bring the poppy-covered wreathes to lay at the foot of the Cenotaph.

Then we are playing a mournful song with the theme, "Lest we Forget". I find it very sad when we repeatedly intone a phrase, which sounds like the words, "Lest we forget, Lest we forget."

While the solemn line approaches the Cenotaph we begin playing quietly, "Deep Harmony" which I remember playing with the Kitsilano Boy's Band at an evening service in the old Kitsilano United Church. Clarinets take the second verse, Trumpets the third and so on. Then we switch to "Abide with Me", repeating the drill until the full band crescendo alerts the crowd that all the "official wreathes" have been laid.

The Loudspeaker announces that after the official wreath- laying party is finished it will be permissible for anyone else with wreathes to approach the Cenotaph. One of the unofficial wreathes is laid on behalf of a very strange-looking group, who also march in the parade. Dressed in dress suits or T-Shirts or battle fatigues are a group of Canadians who served in the American Army in the War in Vietnam. Now, their requests for pensions brushed off by American authorities, and lacking any recognition in Canada at all, they are using this moment to remind us and each other that they exist.

We march off down Hastings Streets, then perform the "Reverse" which our Band Leader warned us about: each column weaving through the others, and now play for the on-coming parade - those companies which did not come equipped with their own band. When the last group passes it is time to head for the bus.

---

I was not ready for the emotion I felt at this Remembrance Day. After all it is now over 40 years old since World War 2. I thought I had dealt with all of those emotions long ago.

But I guess I just had those memories buried very deep. It took the faces and forms of those who were remembering their comrades, the tears on old and once-strong faces to remind me of the immediacy of the sorrow and the costs in friends and loved ones.

I felt surprisingly close to Jim Miller and George Shoebotham.

When I arrived home I realized that I still did not know what the very familiar word "Cenotaph" really means. The dictionary was a help:

"Cenotaph - a sepulchral monument to person whose body is elsewhere;...tomb from which one has risen - from Greek - kenotaphion (kenos - empty, taphos - tomb)"

A monument to someone's whose body is elsewhere. Some of those bodies were never found. That's why there are monuments to The Unknown Soldier.

And empty tomb - that surely reminds me of Easter morning, when they searched for the body of the "one who lay down his life for his friends" and found that He was not there, He had Risen.

The Cenotaph is there ...

For me...

Lest I Forget...

Lest I Forget...