As many of you are aware, our MMS Homes Team loves real estate.  Myles, Kiel and I enjoy helping buyers, sellers and investors with buying their first home, downsizing, selling a rental property, land redevelopment, or simply providing advice to clients about the real estate process in general.  If truth be told, we spend most of our time either working in real estate, reading publications about real estate or studying real estate.  We truly love how “tangible” real estate is as an investment – especially when you can live in it, touch it, and enjoy it (unlike stocks and bonds).  However, on Friday, November 11^th, I would ask that Realtors not hold open houses, and that for the entire hour of 11am on the 11^th month of the 11^th day of 2016, that we refrain from discussing real estate at all and instead, maintain a 2 minute period of silence to commemorate the lives of those Canadians who have given their lives.  With the US election earlier this week, it seems as though this Remembrance Day is even more significant than ever before.  The election has reminded each of us that we can only counter hatred and ignorance with love and respect all of our differences.  We have never been more proud to be a Canadian than today.

It is always a proud moment to be a Canadian in November, especially when you see a young child wearing a poppy and they can tell you the symbolism of it and how poppies once grew in Flanders where countless lives were lost there during WWI.  With all of the violence and uprisings taking place throughout the world today, it certainly seems that having 2 minutes of silence to show gratitude for our country is a small act that we can each do.

We can be thankful for the opportunity to own real estate.  As mentioned in other newsletters, up until 2011, Cubans were not allowed to own real estate and the government owned all of the land.  We can be thankful that our laws protect us from ethnic discrimination as thousands of people have lost their homes simply because they were of an ethnicity that their government did not find favor with.  We can be thankful that we can live in our home with a sense of safety – we do not have to worry about a militant group breaking down our doors in the middle of the night.  We can be thankful for the opportunity to speak out about political issues and candidates we support (or in some cases, disagree with) about the opportunity to vote.

Our office will be closed on November 11th so that our RE/MAX of Nanaimo staff, realtors and their families can stand in silence and be thankful for all that we have.  Our team will proudly wear our poppies as a symbol of our love for Canada, and as a symbol for the gratitude we have for all of the men and women that have died in an effort to make Canada the best country in the world.

In closing, we thought that we would share with you the “In Flanders Fields” poem that so many of us grew up reciting each Remembrance Day.

“In Flanders Fields”
by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

With gratitude,

Brian & Myles McCullough and Kiel Lukaniuk

www.mmshomes.com

McCullough Marketing Services

RE/MAX of Nanaimo
#1-5140 Metral Drive, Nanaimo, BC V9T 2K8

p: 250.751.1223 | tf: 1.855.224.6645 | fax: 1.866.505.1121