Tag: Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day: Lest We Forget

Remembrance Day (this holiday is called Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Sunday in the U.K.) is held every November 11th in Canada. It is a day for all Canadians to observe a moment of silence and remember our military veterans—those men and women who served, sacrificed, and died for our country.

Remembrance Day ceremonies around the world have been downscaled or even cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, so today I decided to load up an alt and pay a visit to the 14th SL Veterans’ Tribute sim (SLURL, Flickr photo pool). The notecard I received upon arrival reads as follows:

Welcome to the 14th Annual SL Veteran’s Tribute for 2020. This is the 14th annual Veteran’s Tribute that we have put together.
The tribute will be open until November 17th!

…

The Tribute itself is non-political and serves one purpose and one purpose only and that is to honor all the men and women that have given willing of their time to protect the lives we enjoy today.

The goal of the Tribute is to provide a non-political, content filled, educational, interactive SIM inside Second Life where men and women of all walks of life can visit and provide remembrance and honor to those who have served in the Armed Services.

The tribute operates on a zero dollar budget and are non-profit; the entire tribute is built, funded, organized and executed on a purely volunteer basis. We have an organized group on SL called the “SL Veteran’s Tribute” if you would like to look it up. This group will be used as the basis of our planning and scheduling for the Tribute.

With Kindest and Best Regards,
The SL Veteran’s Tribute Group

There is a teleporter at the spawn point to take you to various locations, one of which is the Memorial Wall, where the flags of many nations hang over grey stone walls. On each stone is the name of a military veteran, whom someone wished to remember.

While most of the sim represents the American veteran’s experience (hardly a surprise, since Second Life is an American product), there is a small area set aside for Canadian veterans, including a stone plaque commemorating those who served and died in Afghanistan:

The Canadian Memorial

In Flanders Fields is a poem which most Canadians are familiar with, as it is read every year at Remembrance Day services held across the country; it was written during the First World War by Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. He was inspired to write it on May 3, 1915, after presiding over the funeral of friend and fellow soldier Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle of Ypres (source: Wikipedia).

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
  That mark our place; and in the sky
  The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
  Loved and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
  The torch; be yours to hold it high.
  If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields.

Photo by Laurentiu Iordache on Unsplash

Remembrance Day: Pictures From A Return Visit to Remembrance Island in Fortnite

Photo by Laurentiu Iordache on Unsplash

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
  That mark our place; and in the sky
  The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
  Loved and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
  The torch; be yours to hold it high.
  If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields.

—In Flanders Fields, by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD

As it turns out, when I first visited Remembrance Island in Fortnite (the custom island built for the Royal Canadian Legion to commemorate Remembrance Day, November 11th), there was a software bug which had the lighting permanently set to nighttime, which of course made it difficult to take pictures!

This bug has since been fixed, so here are some photographs I took of Remembrance Island on a return visit. There are eight environments to visit in total, following the trail of red poppies:

  • trenches from the First World War,
  • the Pool of Peace,
  • the Vimy Ridge Memorial,
  • the Battle of Ypres,
  • D-Day on the Beaches of Normandy,
  • a ruined town to show the liberation of Europe,
  • Hill 355 from the Korean conflict,
  • and a sandy landscape depicting Canada’s mission in Afghanistan.

A small section of the island to the west of the towering Vimy Ridge Memorial presents information about the Canadian soldiers’ experiences in the Korean War, where 516 Canadians died serving their country:

And there is an area which recreates the recent Canadian mission in Afghanistan, where 158 soldiers lost their lives:

At the end of exploring the island and learning about Canada’s war history, you arrive at a virtual recreation of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, with row upon row upon row of soldiers’ graves.

This is a sobering and moving experience, which I do recommend you pay a visit to, in order to be reminded of the sacrifices made by so many soldiers, beginning in World War I and up to the present day. Lest we forget.

Visiting Remembrance Island in Fortnite: The Royal Canadian Legion Sets Up a Custom Island in the Popular Game for Remembrance Day, Nov. 11th

Remembrance Island (image from The Globe and Mail)

I am not a gamer.

To give a very recent example, I bought No Man’s Sky when I was swayed by all the hype about the recent Beyond update that supported VR users. I played the game a grand total of 90 minutes (in desktop mode, no less), set it aside, and haven’t touched it since. I much prefer the open-ended nature of social VR and virtual worlds, and even the open world exploration offered by No Man’s Sky, with its millions of procedurally-generated planets to explore and asteroids to mine, bored me. I just couldn’t get into it.

Yes, I have tried MMOs like Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), mainly because I was curious to see how faithful the game would be to Tolkien’s books. But I never got past Level 20 on my hobbit. Again, I couldn’t be bothered with all the battling and leveling up required. Yawn.

So, thus far I have successfully avoided the cultural juggernaut known as Fortnite. But when I read in The Globe and Mail newspaper today that the Royal Canadian Legion (the Canadian military veterans’ association) had decided to create a custom-built Remembrance Island within Fortnite to celebrate Remembrance Day on November 11th, I was intrigued.

Ahead of Remembrance Day, the Royal Canadian Legion hopes to teach children about the sacrifices men and women in this country have made in conflicts dating to the First World War with a game, one built inside the popular survival video game Fortnite.

Remembrance Island, a custom Fortnite island launched by the veterans’ organization, features First World War trenches, D-Day beaches and the Vimy Ridge cenotaph. Unlike Fortnite, there is no violence on this island.

Instead, players start at the beaches of Normandy and follow a trail of poppies through environments depicting conflicts Canadians have fought in, stopping at trail markers that offer information about each one until finally arriving at the Vimy Ridge Memorial, where they are asked by the Legion to share a moment of silence of their own on Nov. 11 at 11 at night — a time meant to meet gamers on their terms.

“It’s an opportunity to meet younger Canadians on their own turf and educate them about the contributions of Canadians who have served our country,” says Ari Elkouby, executive creative director at Wunderman Thompson Canada, the agency that developed the game on a pro bono basis for the Legion.

…

The agency partnered with a licensed Fortnite island builder, someone able to design unique islands within the game, to create Remembrance Island.

Given the nature of Remembrance Day, when the country celebrates sacrifice, not violence, it was crucial that the game exclude any combat or ability to destroy or defile anything on the island, Mr. Elkouby says.

“We wanted to kind of flip the idea of Fortnite on its head, where Fortnite is a place where you fight and you battle to a place where you respect and remember,” he says. “We wanted to ensure that the sanctity of what we were creating was maintained.”

Each of the game’s eight environments – trenches from the First World War, the Pool of Peace, the Vimy Ridge Memorial, the Battle of Ypres, D-Day on the Beaches of Normandy, a ruined town to show the liberation of Europe, Hill 355 from the Korean conflict, and a sandy landscape depicting Canada’s mission in Afghanistan – were created by researching archival materials, Mr. Elkouby says.

So, I decided to download Fortnite (it’s free), and I followed these instructions to pay a visit to Remembrance Island.

I stumbled around a little bit at first, like a deer caught in the headlights (What? There’s no beginner tutorial!?!! I’m just being DROPPED OUT OF THE BACK OF A FLYING BUS?!??), but eventually, I was able to orient myself and successfully reach Remembrance Island.

Trying to find my way around in the darkness, following the trail of red poppies, I came to my first destination: the beaches of Normandy.

As I went along, pop-up text laid out the scenes, explaining how the battle played out, and what the soldiers faced:

I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but I really did feel at times as if I were a lost, scared, confused soldier, running across the nighttime battlefield landscape, not knowing what lay around the corner.

I leave you with a 40-second video put out by the Royal Canadian Legion to promote Remembrance Island in Fortnite:

And, now that I (kinda) know what I’m doing, I might just pay a return visit on Remembrance Day, November 11th, to virtually salute Canada’s veterans. I think this is a genius idea for outreach to younger Canadians!