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 it's 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
its 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 non-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.
Lest we forget. |
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