Among the crowds marking Remembrance Day at ceremonies around the Okanagan and across Canada were some of the country’s remaining Second World War veterans.
In Penticton, 99-year-old Henry Kriwokon was one of two Second World War veterans who attended the Remembrance Day ceremony at the city’s trade and convention centre.
It’s a similar story elsewhere, only around 33,000 of the more than a million Canadians who took part in that conflict are still alive.
Kriwokon said two members of his 1,000-member regiment are still living and spoke about the importance of remembrance.
“How does anybody know why they are enjoying their freedom? Everybody’s just taking their freedom for granted. We had to give that to them.”
Kriwokon’s service has been commemorated on a coin and postage stamp. He was one of the soldiers in the background of the well known Second World War photograph ‘Wait for me, Daddy’ that pictures a young boy reaching for his father’s hand as the man walks in a column of troops.
– with files from Shelby Thom