Canadians honor soldiers past and present

OTTAWA, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Canadians paused Thursday morning in observance of Remembrance Day, which honors the soldiers killed in the last and current centuries.

To mark the signing of the armistice that ended World War I at 11 a.m., Nov. 11, 1918, ceremonies were held at that time across the country's time zones, with the largest in Ottawa at the National War Memorial.

Before the sun rose in Canada, some 200 Canadian troops in Afghanistan held a ceremony at the Kandahar air field to honor fallen comrades. Prime Minister Stephen Harper laid a wreath at the South Korean War Memorial in Seoul, where he is attending a G20 economic summit.

While there are no longer any Canadian World War I veterans alive, some 143,700 World War II veterans remain with an average age of 87, the National Post said. However, those veterans are dying at a rate of 1,700 per week, the report said. More than 1 million Canadians fought in World War II.

The ceremonies also honored the 516 Canadians who died in the Korean war and those killed in numerous peacekeeping missions.

In Ottawa, thousands listened to speeches and prayers and observed two minutes of silence begun with the firing of cannons and ending with a low fly-past of military jets.

In a relatively new tradition, thousands of people removed their poppy lapel pins sold to aid veterans and placed them on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside the Parliament buildings after the ceremony.