conway
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This is a good read - Odd 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 2002
LONDON - Until the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers
accidentally killed by a U.S. warplane in Afghanistan, probably
almost no one outside their home country had been aware that
Canadian troops were deployed in the region. And as always, Canada
will now 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, its 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
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 week, four more grieving
Canadian families knew that cost all too tragically well.
**** ****
Please pass the on or print it and give it to any of your friends
or relatives who served in the Canadian Forces, it is a wonderful
tribute to those who choose to serve their country and the world in
our quiet Canadian way.
Just for the record, the Canadian death toll in Afghanistan so far,
is 43, including the first Canadian Woman Soldier, ever killed in
active combat.
In addition there have been many, many wounded. They deserve
our support
and our prayers. We have every reason to be extreemly proud of
our
forces.
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