All over Canada, people paused at 11 a.m. Monday to mark Remembrance Day with a moment of silence.

Waterloo Region was no exception, with hundreds braving cold, windy weather to attend ceremonies at the cenotaphs in Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, New Hamburg and Guelph.

At the cenotaph on Queen Street in Cambridge, three members of the Gibson family – a father, son and grandson, all of whom have served – laid wreaths in commemoration.

It was the first time all three generations of Gibsons were able to attend the same Remembrance Day ceremony.

“It brought a tear to my eye,” says John Gibson, who served in the British army from 1956 to 1959.

“It means a lot to get these two guys back from Afghanistan safe and sound.”

Gibson, a retired corporal, had just moved to Cambridge when he was drafted into the British army.

After his stint was complete, he returned to Canada to raise his family.

His son, Sgt. Lance Gibson Sr., remains on active duty with the military police branch to this day, although he plans to retire next summer.

The youngest of the three, Cpl. Lance Gibson Jr., also serves in the military police branch and has done two tours of duty in Afghanistan.

John Gibson wasn’t the first of the family to serve in the military – a straight line can be traced from him to ancestors who served in the Boer War.

Despite that family history, Lance Gibson Jr. says he never felt any pressure to follow in his ancestors’ footsteps.

“My parents never pushed me to go one way or the other. It’s just what I wanted to do,” he says.

Lance Gibson Sr., who has also spent time in Afghanistan, says bringing the three generations together for Remembrance day was also just what his son wanted to do.

“He called me up and told me that he could go to any Remembrance Day ceremony that he wanted to,” he tells CTV News.

“He wanted to be on parade with his grandfather and myself.”

In other local Remembrance Day commemorations, the Waterloo Region Museum set up a virtual war memorial scrolling through the names of each of the 1,300-plus regional soldiers to die in battle.

With Waterloo’s branch of the Royal Canadian Legion in need of financial assistance, the city’s food truck community stepped up the plate with a post-ceremony fundraiser outside the Legion hall on Regina Street.

In Guelph, 158 white crosses were set up on the Legion’s lawn to commemorate the 158 Canadians who died in Afghanistan.