When Lance Cpl. Everton Howard McLelland, featured here, was a young boy, he lived with his mother and sisters in the dock area of Old Town Niagara-on-the-Lake. Later, the family moved to Toronto but they still had family here in town. McClelland enlisted Nov. 23, 1915 with the 81st Battalion and served with the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles Battalion in France and Belgium for three years. Although this photo shows their Toronto home, it is a good example of the celebration that most soldiers received when they returned. Many locals would decorate their homes and invite both family and neighbours to join their revelry. After the celebrations quieted down, the home front would soon have to find ways to adapt to the new reality of men returning home with both physical and mental disabilities. From the ultimate sacrifice to lost limbs to survivor’s guilt to shell shock, generations to come would feel the severe after-effects of the Great War. On Remembrance Day, let’s be thankful to all Canadian soldiers, past and present, who did not return and for those who did and the sacrifices they made to their bodies, their minds and their futures.