One of the honours of being Mayor is participating in community celebrations and events, none more moving than when we come together for ANZAC Day.
This year it was my privilege to join the dawn parade in Huntly, organised by the Huntly RSA, and the Ngaaruawaahia civic service which included a brilliant speech from local high school speech competition winner Jessica Greaney. I also attended the unveiling of a restored WWII Roll of Honour Board at Kariotahi Hall in the very north of our district.
I was joined by my wife Susan, and the service at Kariotahi was especially meaningful for us. Her great, great uncle James (Jim) McNair came from Ōtaua, just a short distance from Kariotahi, and fought and died in WWI as part of the ANZACs. It was the first time Susan had seen the Roll of Honour there, and we were able to share Jim’s story, a loss shared by far too many families across New Zealand.
Gunner James Archibald McNair was fatally wounded at the disastrous Third Battle of Ypres on 12 October 1917, at Passchendaele. This is a name now synonymous with the brutality of war and immense sacrifice, and a day that saw the greatest single loss of New Zealand lives, then and still to this day.
Jim was moved to a nearby casualty clearing station where he died two days later, aged 23. He was buried, but that site and his remains, along with many others, were lost in later fighting. They lie in the mud of those Flanders Fields where the poppies blow.
Jim’s family farmed at Ōtaua, and to this day McNair Road remains as a reminder of that connection and his sacrifice.
My thanks to the communities of Kariotahi, Ngāruawāhia and Huntly for allowing us to join you in honouring those who served and those who gave their lives for the freedoms we enjoy today. Those freedoms are once again under threat, as the world faces conflict in places like Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, and Sudan to name just four.We remember and honour all those who have served, then and now. Not to glorify war, but to remember the cost of it and why we should strive for a better and safer world for our children and the generations that follow.
