OTTAWA (CUP)—Remembrance Day is an important day to respect all veterans, especially the ones who put their university careers on hold to enlist. But some veterans wonder if students today would make the same choices.

“I find today that youth don’t know what the hell is going on,” said Cliff Chadderton, chairman of the National Council of Veteran Associations in Canada. “Today, nobody can make any sense of it [the world].”

Chadderton, 83, is one of thousands of Canadian students who went off to war.

“When I enlisted I was in my first year of an arts degree at the University of Manitoba,” said the Winnipeg native, who rose to the rank of Acting Major while stationed in Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

“It all got interrupted,” said Chadderton, who was wounded twice in action.

“At 20 years old I was just starting university. I was finding real trouble keeping a night job [as a news editor for Canadian Press] and going to school at the same time,” he said.

Jack Arseneault, 58, from Springhill, Nova Scotia, said he had a ticket to attend the Royal Military College in Kingston, but he “didn’t go because of money and love.”

He said his family was poor, the love of his life was back home and the military provided a guaranteed income.

“I turned it [education] down because of my situation,” said Arseneault.

The Minister of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Rey Pagtakhan, suggested today’s students might have a different attitude to joining the military.

“The standard of living in Canada was very different back then,” said Pagtakhan.

“The state of schooling at the time was [also] very different.”

Captain Vance White, a public affairs officer for the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group, echoed Pagtakhan’s remarks.

“There is a total culture shift,” he said. “The values are different today, [it’s a] different generation. Back than it was what we have to offer you. Now, it is what do you have to offer me?”

Currently there are only 58,500 full-time personnel in the Canadian forces and according to their Web site, “there is a distinct trend in 17- to 24-year-olds staying in school longer. In effect, the Canadian Forces is now in competition with schools as well as other employers for its traditional pool of new recruits.”

Chadderton maintains that students should “absolutely” still enlist, but should also get a degree.

Pagtakhan has his own opinions on youth enlisting.

“If youth of today decided not to go to war, there wouldn’t be a war,” he said laughing. “That’s utopia.”

He added that “there is a merit to [enlisting], because military doesn’t necessarily translate into war.”