Remebrance Day 2023

In a world increasingly obsessed with Imperial Dreams, we must remember the cost of those dreams.

Image: Saugeen Times

Remembrance Day 2020

Today's ceremony at the cenotaph in our town will be different. It'll be scaled back. There will be fewer people -- all wearing masks. And it will be shorter than usual. COVID has changed everything.

Nonetheless, we need to remember, in a world with far too many demagogues, that we should never repeat the folly which this day finally brought to an end.

Image: Bay Ward Bulletin

Remembrance Day, 2019

We live in a culture which exalts in self promotion. Self sacrifice is not a popular meme. It's never been popular. But sometimes it's necessary. It's that necessity which we remember today.

Image: (John Woods/Canadian Press)

On This Remembrance Day

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of the end of The Great War. It was supposed to be the war to end all wars. And it's true that, since 1945, there have been no world wars. But there have been plenty of proxy wars -- in Korea, in Vietnam and in Afghanistan -- the longest war of the modern era.

The Great War was supposed to Make The World Safe For Democracy. And today democracy is threatened around the world.

So, what are we to make of today? Some might say that we've made precious little progress. And, on my darker days, I'm inclined to agree. Perhaps we've just been lucky. My father -- a veteran of World War II -- used to say that he survived because of "pure dumb luck."

In many ways, the history of war is a chronicle of pure stupidity. But it's worth remembering that the United Nations was founded as an antidote to war. And, despite its failures, it still tries to rein in our darker angels.

Something to think about on this Remembrance Day.

Image: Filipino Caregiver

Their Coming Enriched This Country

                                                     CBC Digital Archives

Thirty-six years ago, Canada opened its doors to a flood of refugees from Vietnam. Tim Harper writes on this Remembrance Day:

Scott Mullin was 22 and barely out of Carleton University when the Star headlined a March 5, 1979, piece about him — “Viet refugees view Canadian as a god.’’

A few months later, the CBC called him “The One-Man Board of Immigration,’’ in a July 1979 piece from reporter Peter Mansbridge.

Mullin, now the vice-president of community relations for the TD Bank, determined which of the so-called Vietnamese “boat people” came to Canada and which were denied passage, relying largely on gut impressions which resulted in far more “yays” than “nays.” 

As a banker, Mullin is concerned about making good investments. But he knows that, besides investing in things, you have to invest in people. In 1979, he told Mansbridge:

"We have to look upon this for ourselves as an investment in the future,’’ the young Mullin told Mansbridge 36 years ago. “The first six months we might have a lot of problems, but what’s this guy’s son going to be like and how’s he going to do? I think that’s the important thing you have to look at.’’

Just as in 1979, today’s Canada’s immigration officers must be given the latitude needed to their jobs, he says, and they would be looking at the potential of the family unit, not necessarily the parents, but the 14-year-old girl who learned to speak English while in a refugee camp.

 “You look at it as a generational investment,’’ he says. “It’s not mom and dad. It’s the kids.’ As he looks back, he knows the first generation of Vietnamese Canadians he admitted did reasonably well. 

“The next generation did extremely well.’’

Today we remember our soldiers who have died in four wars. But we should also remember those who have fled wars to live  among us -- and whose coming has enriched this country.

Remembrance Day 2014

                                            http://veteransday-pictures.com/

We have become mesmerized by bad behaviour. Michael den Tandt writes that honour is is short supply these days:

Honour is AWOL, missing without leave, in the case of the famous Toronto radio host now accused of serially assaulting at least nine women. Jian Ghomeshi has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime. The allegations against him have not been tested in court. But setting aside the outcome of the police investigation, it is clear from multiple accounts that Ghomeshi ran CBC Radio’s flagship culture show, Q, as his private, undisputed fiefdom. Medieval, you might say.

Honour was in short supply last week in Ottawa. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau turfed two MPs from his caucus over allegations of “serious personal misconduct.”

As far as I have been able to tell, Trudeau went to some lengths to avoid identifying the alleged victims, or indeed the way in which they had been victimized. New Democrats promptly leaked the fact that the allegations concerned sexual harassment of female NDP MPs – and then unloaded on the Liberal leader for making the matter public. The New Democrat deputy leader, Megan Leslie, suggested Saturday on CBC Radio’s The House that a better solution would have been to deal with it all in-house, in other words secretly. 

Den Tandt suggests that, on this Remembrance Day we look to our veterans who have always adhered to a Canadian tradition:

In Afghanistan it was embodied in the Canadian Forces’ “3-d” approach to conflict – defence, diplomacy and development. This was always more than sloganeering. Even the sergeants in the Canadian Forces – especially the sergeants, in my experience – sought to embody strength with compassion. This is not to portray them as delicate do-gooders, but simply to acknowledge that they were very aware they had a purpose over and above that of killing the enemy.

Long before Afghanistan, in Rwanda, or the Medak Pocket in Croatia, the CF ethos lived in a willingness to do the perilous and hard work well, even when the country was uninterested. In Haiti, in 2010, after the earthquake, I remember sitting quietly in the dark, listening to Canadian soldiers speak to one another of the horrors they’d seen that day. There were strength, competence and decency to make any Canadian’s heart swell with pride.

The history of war is the history of folly. But, in the midst of folly, human beings can still be guided by their better angels.

Breaking Faith

Today we honour the dead. And that's as it should be. "If ye break faith with us who die," John McCrae wrote, "we shall not sleep." It's easy to keep faith with the dead.  It doesn't cost much.

But we have broken faith with the living, the veterans who have come home and who will carry the wounds of war for the rest of their lives. Guy Parent, who replaced military ombudsman Pat Strogan, is doing the same thing for which Strogan was fired. Parent reports that the government has abandoned returning veterans. According to the Canadian Press,

Guy Parent's long-awaited assessment of the government's so-called veterans charter found that veterans are receiving inadequate compensation from the government for their pain and suffering.

Hundreds of severely disabled veterans, in particular, will also take a financial hit once they retire because some of their benefits will end and they don't have military pensions, Parent says in the report.

And the proposed budget will cut the offices which deliver veterans services. The Globe and Mail reports that:

The Conservative government says it is closing the offices in Corner Brook, Nfld., Charlottetown, Sydney, N.S., Windsor, Ont., Thunder Bay, Ont., Brandon, Man., Saskatoon, Sask., Kelowna, B.C., and Prince George, B.C. by February to adjust to the changing needs and demographics of veterans across Canada.

Veterans Affairs officials point out that veterans will still be able to obtain help at Service Canada locations. They can also call the department, use their computers or request a home visit.

In its quest for re-election, the Harper government has decided that Canadian veterans are expendable. The truth is that, for the prime minister, breaking faith is standard operating procedure. Everyone is expendable -- except the man Alison, over at Creekside, calls "Commander Dress-up."

Armchair Warriors

For Stephen Harper's Conservatives, war is a big deal -- as long as it generates good ad copy. This government is spending $28 million to commemorate a war that happened two hundred years ago. But, as veterans gather at the War Memorial on Parliament Hill tomorrow, they will be engaged in yet another battle with the Harperites to remember the soldiers who have returned from Canada's wars -- most recently the War in Afghanistan. Tom Walkom writes in today's Toronto Star:

This week’s appearance on Parliament Hill of disabled veterans and military widows critical of the government was just the latest chapter in an ongoing dispute.

Disabled veterans had to take Ottawa to court once to stop it clawing back portions of their pensions.

Now a separate group of vets is suing the government over another pension issue — Ottawa’s decision to replace lifetime disability pensions with a cheaper, one-time, lump-sum payment.

In the first court case, Stephen Harper’s government spent $750,000 in legal fees fighting its own vets and conceded defeat only after the judge ruled Ottawa’s clawbacks blatantly unfair.

In the second case, Ottawa remains obdurate.

Hypocrisy has been the byword for this government ever since it came to power. But it is particularly galling that these armchair warriors should treat Canada's living veterans with such disrespect. However, it's worth remembering that Mr. Harper defined contempt as being outvoted in the House of Commons.

Remembrance Day, 2011

I awoke this morning to the refrain, "And the band played waltzing Matilda." I thought of my father, who spent some of World War II in Australia. Most of the time, he was behind anti-aircraft guns -- the kind that fire large shells and make a lot of noise. Understandably, by the end of the war, he wanted nothing to do with guns -- large or small. I never saw him go near one.

However, he did not feel the same about the army. He said it taught him self-discipline, how to organize on the fly, and how to fix things. And, when he returned, it offered him an education. Late in his life, he told me that he owed his return not to anything he did but to "pure dumb luck."

When we buried him a couple of years ago, two of the men he served with came to the grave site -- with their wives and their walkers. "If ye break faith with us who die," John McCrae wrote, "we shall not sleep."

Today we keep the faith.

Looking Back In Sadness

I have, on more than one occasion, expressed my admiration for the work of James Travers. On this Remembrance Day, he wrote of his father who "learned to be a soldier at Kingston's Royal Military College" and his uncle who "died soon after wearing pilot's wings for the first time."

They would, he wrote, not recognize the Canada of 2010. "They wouldn't understand a country where patriotism is partisan, where men and women in uniform are used as political props or where death and sports are shamelessly conflated on Hockey Night in Canada."

For we have become a mean spirited country and -- according to the prime minister -- we have done it as a matter of principle. But, as Lawrence Martin made clear this week, the prime minister's principles are pure piffle -- whether they be government accountability, fiscal frugality, a firm commitment to an end date in Afghanistan, or the free market sale of Canadian assets like potash.

Many of us never accepted those principles. What is remarkable is that Harper is still selling himself as a Conservative. For the truth is that he is no such thing. His convictions are totally malleable and are easily altered by his quest for power.

He seems to have befuddled Canadians. But the rest of the world has his number. Under Harper's leadership, Travers wrote:

Canada fell from global grace because it is no longer a modest but constant light among nations. Rather than holding steady, it flickers in the gusting winds of great challenges -- among them Arab Israeli peace, African poverty and climate change -- that are to this generation what world wars were to our parents and grandparents.

Canada, like its prime minister, has become puffed up by its own self importance. It is worth remembering that we used to be a much different -- and a much better -- country.

This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

The Wounds of War

This Wednesday there will be another parade from the Canadian Legion to the Cenotaph, which -- appropriately enough -- is on Main Street, in the geographical centre of town. Each year there are fewer veterans who march to the Cenotaph; and they march there more haltingly.

I live in small town Ontario -- in a place whose existence was officially recognized 170 years ago. The town was founded by United Empire Loyalists, people who thought Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson were rabble rousers. Their allegiance was always to Britain; and so, when the mother country entered two wars in the last century, this town's sons -- ready, aye, ready -- lined up to defend the mother country. The names of the residents who died in those causes are engraved on that monument at the centre of town.

One of our veterans died last spring. On D-Day he was on Juno Beach, where he was wounded. He returned here with a limp and the click of a leg brace, to teach where I taught high school. He himself taught history; and every year, on November 11th, he took it upon himself to organize -- even long after he retired -- the school's Remembrance Day ceremonies. His roots were Loyalist. And, even though there were many who did not agree with his politics, his personal integrity was beyond reproach. He loved his family; he loved his country; he loved his town. And, for him, public service was the highest calling.

I think of him this week. I think of the gunman and his victims in Texas. And I think of this generation's dead soldiers who are flown from Afghanistan to Trenton, not far from here. I think of all the wounded, who have returned home, forever changed. When I was young, I was foolish enough to think that we could banish war the way we had banished polio -- forgetting that the Book of Ecclesiastes warned us long ago that war was cyclical and seasonal. There is something unbearably sad in that realization. And that is precisely why we must remember those who have died, and those who were wounded, this Wednesday.

We, who were fortunate enough to not bear their burdens, enjoy the fruits of their labours.

Another Remembrance Day

Yesterday was Remembrance Day. And in every city, town and hamlet across this land, Canadians gathered at their local cenotaphs to remember those men and women who are buried in Europe or at home -- and to pay homage to those soldiers, sailors and airmen who are still with us.

Those who are still with us are dwindling. The number of former soldiers who walk down the Main Streets of Canada each November 11th grows fewer and feebler with each passing year. But we still feel compelled to drop what we are doing at eleven o'clock, and think about the young men and women who will never grow old.

And what do we, the living, owe them? I wish I could say that we owe them the gift of universal peace. The two Great Wars of the last century were supposed to be the Wars to end all Wars. If only. But the years which followed each of those conflicts should have taught us that such noble aspirations are short lived.

So, where does that leave us? For awhile Canadians found military purpose in peacekeeping. But, in fulfilling our NATO commitment, we have discovered that we no longer perform that role. If Afghanistan teaches us anything, it is that it is much easier to get into a war than it is to get out. Therefore, when our leaders beat the drum, telling us that it is our duty to defend our country, they should always be met with a healthy dose of skepticism. Those who give the orders rarely lead from the front. And the young almost always bear the burden of the battle.

It has been a long while since we fought the good fight. But, every Remembrance Day, we recall that there was once such a fight; and we recall that we enjoy the blessings of this country because those who joined the Canadian armed forces did what was necessary. In the end, the best way to honour the dead is to distinguish between the necessary and the nihilistic. Those whose names are on headstones in Europe and the war monuments across Canada know that difference.

If Ye Break Faith

This past Saturday, I listened yet again to In Flanders Fields at eleven o'clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It is a poem which I have heard, read and taught for over fifty years. And still, after all that time, I choke up when I get to the last three lines:

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

"We are the Dead", John McCrae wrote, unable to foresee his own fate, while admonishing us not to forget his and his contemporaries' sacrifice. But, it seems to me, if we are not to break faith with the dead, there are a few things which we need to remember about the nature of War and its consequences.

First, all wars are cloaked in soaring rhetoric. McCrae's war was the "war to end all wars." The American Civil War was fought to ensure that "government of the people, by the people and for the people [should] not perish." The French Revolution was all about, "liberty, equality and fraternity." However, as Wilfred Owen -- McCrae's poetic ally -- recognized, whatever the slogan, it is an "old lie."

Second, it is a lie because wars are not fought for ideals; they are fought for strategic resources. Land (living space, Hitler called it), opium, oil -- the list is almost endless. But, however long the list, these resources are presented to the public as the equivalent of oxygen. They are the things upon which the survival of the combatants depend. Take them away and we -- however "we" define ourselves -- will cease to exist.

Third, those who lead the charge on both sides suffer from terminal certitude. They are incapable of performing that "trick" which Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird, calls "getting inside a man's skin and walking around in it." Once one looks at the world through the eyes of one's enemy, it is impoosible to demonize him. We can only kill those we truly don't understand.

And, finally, most wars have something to do with revenge. World War II had a lot to do with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, just as present conditions in Iraq have much to do with centuries old rivalries between Sunnis and Shias. On the other side of the ledger, much of the suceess of Western Europe can be traced to the path the Allies pursued after The Second World War and the implementation of the Marshall Plan.

There is a moral imperative every November 11th to remember those who, in Lincoln's words, gave "the last full measure of devotion." But we do the dead no honour if we forget the nature of war itself. It is, as William Tecumseh Sherman -- one of Lincoln's generals -- said, "hell." Anybody who tries to sell it as anything else is selling snake oil.