The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 is when armistice was declared and the guns of First World War fell silent.
At 2 a.m. Monday, while most Prince George people were sleeping, participants in the fourth annual Remembrance Day Run gathered with their headlamps and sneakers in the Prince George Aquatic centre parking lot to begin an 11-kilometre run through the city streets.
The group run (it’s not a race) is a physical way to commemorate all those heroes who have fallen in the line of duty.
Race organizer Derk Grooten, a former artilleryman with the Royal Dutch Army, now works as a radiation therapist at the BC Cancer Centre for the North, having immigrated to Prince George from The Netherlands with his wife and two children in March 2013.
He’s participated in the city’s traditional Remembrance Day ceremonies every year since 2014 but wanted a more personal challenge for younger veterans to help them remember what our soldiers from past generations endured fighting for our freedom.
“We don’t have that knowledge any more about those missions because all of the people who did those missions are not there anymore, they can’t tell those stories anymore, so the younger generations are not constantly shown those stories,” said Grooten.
“We see good numbers here in Prince George for the traditional ceremonies but I feel like eventually that if you look across the board the Remembrance Day numbers will be trailing off and we need to be aware and create awareness, so that does not happen.”
What started in 2021 as an idea he had one week in advance of Remembrance Day that year brought out just eight runners and has doubled each year since, to 16 in 2022 and 32 last year. This year the target is 77 runners, a number pitched to Grooten by his friend, Scott McWalter, who suggested they try to match the year in which Grooten was born.
“I said to Scott, ‘77 is also the year a lot of the younger veterans were born,” said Grooten. “We always think of the veterans as the World War 1, World War 2 or Korean War veterans, but those guys are not really around anymore. There are couple maybe in Prince George that are around that range but other than that it’s all these junior veterans that we’re honouring who established peace in parts of the world.”
Grooten learned recently somebody in Victoria has picked up on his idea and organized a 2 a.m. group running event as well on Remembrance Day.
“It’s not about me, it’s about the young generations that need to be told and taught that everyday freedom we have in Canada can’t be taken for granted, it doesn’t come for free,” Grooten said.
The route for the run includes the cenotaph at Veterans Plaza at City Hall, taking the runners past the Prince George RCMP downtown detachment on Victoria Street, the Royal Canadian Legion No. 43 at 1116 Sixth Ave., and the Prince George Fire Rescue No. 1 hall on Massey Drive. The run finished at the Aquatic Centre.
