Remember when
Ann (and not pointing fingers or anything) was unaware of Canadian troops in Afghanistan/whereever...I found this article in my email...
A British news paper salutes Canada . . . this is a good read. It
is funny how it took someone in England to put it into words...
Sunday Telegraph Article From today's UK wires: Salute to a brave and
modest nation - Kevin Myers, The Sunday Telegraph LONDON -
Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan ,
probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops are deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will bury
its dead, just as the rest of the world, as always will forget
its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever
does.
It seems that Canada 's historic mission is to come to the selfless
aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the
crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored.
Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the
hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks
out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers
serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing
resumes, there is Canada , the wallflower still, while those she once helped
Glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet
again.
That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American
continent with the United States , and for being a selfless friend of Britain
in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn
in two different directions:
It seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the
new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never
fully got the gratitude it deserved. Yet its purely voluntary
contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps
the greatest of any democracy.
Almost 10% of Canada 's entire population of seven million people
served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000
died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian
troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of
battle.
Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect,
it's unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular Memory
as somehow or other the work of the "British."
The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the
war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the
Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships
participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian
soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the
third-largest navy and the fourth-largest air force in the world.
The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had
the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in
film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a
campaign in which the United States had clearly not participated - a
touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since
abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity.
So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in
Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus
Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William
Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art
Linkletter and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and Christopher Plummer, British.
It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to
be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is
as unshakably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada
has proved quite unable to find any takers.
Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the
achievements of it's sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely
unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by anyone else - that 1% of the world's population has provided 10% of
the world's peacekeeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half
century have been the greatest peacekeepers on Earth - in 39 missions on UN
mandates, and six on non-UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia .
Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular
on-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia , in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.
So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless
friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac , Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun.
It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such
honour comes at a high cost. This past year more grieving Canadian
families knew that cost all too tragically well.
*********************
Please pass this on to any of your friends or relatives who served in
the Canadian Forces or anyone who is proud to be Canadian; it is a
wonderful tribute to those who choose to serve their country and the world in
our quiet Canadian way
"A mother understands what a child does not say."
--Jewish proverb
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by AnnW
