MUHC celebrates Remembrance Day with parade
Posted November 11, 2024 12:04 pm.
Last Updated November 11, 2024 6:11 pm.
The MUHC celebrated Remembrance Day with a parade on Monday.
It was led by a bagpipe player and former patient of Cedars Cancer Centre, William David Inglis.
“The Glen? Well, heck yeah. I’m a patient there. So, it’s a true honour for me to play and pipe at the Glen,” said Inglis.
“We have a very democratic, free country. And it’s a moment of time to pause, reflect, for those who fought for our freedom.”
Inglis discovered a lump on his lower leg in the summer of 2023.
“Being a lifetime athlete, I thought, hmm, that’s strange. Maybe it will go away. Within two weeks it didn’t, so I thought maybe I’d better go see a doctor. I saw a doctor, and it was MRI determined a type of sarcoma,” said Inglis.
He had a biopsy and then underwent radiation therapy over a period of 10 days.
“Then a five hour operation in November. Again, Dr. (Anthony) Bozzo performed the surgery at the Montreal General Hospital with Dr. Xu, plastic surgeon. One week in hospital to recover and the food actually was quite good,” said Inglis.
After the parade, a ceremony was held, marked with a moment of silence, paying tribute to members of the Canadian Armed Forces who lost their lives. Then, there was a reading of the poem “In Flanders Fields,” written by John McCrae, who worked at the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1904 before being deployed to Belgium in 1914.
“It has to do in this instance, mostly with heritage and the need to maintain memory, memory for our soldiers, memory for the doctors who worked in World War One and Two and crew in Afghanistan,” said Jonathan Meakins, director of the RBC Art and Heritage Centre.
Speaking of Inglis, Meakins says it was a triumph for curator Alexandra Kirsh to have found a piper who was also a patient at the hospital.
“Bagpipe music is something that, I don’t know, it stirs your fibres. It makes you feel very emotional. It has a capacity actually to bring people to tears for reasons that are slightly opaque, but there’s a resonance to it. It gets into your inner soul, I suppose,” said Meakins.
Inglis has been playing the bagpipe for 20 years now. He started when he was 40 with no musical experience. Within two months of his surgery, he was back on the skating rink and has since cycled about 5,000 kilometres to date.
“So again, the incredible staff here at the Cedars, the Glen, along the way, everyone explained what I have, course of action, and, uh, final note, I’m all good,” said Inglis.
