A British newspaper 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.**/