A Comment by Doug Draper
In Canada’s capital of Ottawa there is something called a “national war memorial” and there is also a “war museum.” I am not so sure that that the United States, as much as militarism has been part of that country’s culture, has a national “war” memorial or museum quite like that.
Canada’s “War Memorial” in country’s capital of Ottawa, Ontario. Why isn’t it a ‘Peace Memorial’?
On this Remembrance Day – call it Veterans Day in the U.S. – I keep reading and hearing on radio and TV the same sad stories we all keep hearing each year at this time about the waste of life at battles no one can now justify fighting during World War One, in particular. Isn’t it interesting how the older these wars get in history – the First World War goes back almost a century ago – the smarter we get in realizing what a waste in human life wars are.
Yet we have government in Canada today – this Conservative government in in particular, that is so inclined to prorogue or shut the doors on a democratically constituted parliament any time it suits its special interests – that is so bullish on war and military might that it would rather focus a solemn day like Remembrance Day on war than peace. Why indeed don’t we have in Canada a national peace memorial rather than a war memorial and have a peace museum rather than a war museum. I am willing to bet that many still living veterans of the Second World War – as of a year ago, we have no veterans left from the “Great War” or World War I that was supposed to be “the war that ends all wars” – would be more interested in emphasizing peace at these memorials than war, or anything that has to do with promoting a militaristic culture ready to engage in future wars.
In the United States, I am sure there are many “war memorials.” There is even one in Washington, D.C. for soldiers in that capital district of the country that fought and died in past wars. But the country’s president doesn’t go to a ceremony there on Veterans or Memorial Day. The president goes to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier across the Potomac River in Arlington Cemetery where the remains of one or more soldiers, so violently dismembered and mashed to piece that no one knew any longer who they were, rest under a block of marble
Our present government in Canada – the Stephen Harper Conservative government – unfortunately seems more interested in promoting a tough-guy militarism than it is in continuing (or at this point, reviving) Canada’s role as a peacemaker around the world. Coming from a government made up of mostly baby boomers in Canada who never knew the horror of war on a bloody field of battle, this is an insult to others who have fought and died in wars that many went on to lament as such a waste that could, under the right leadership, been prevented.
I wonder if Stephen Harper, who has two growing children, will encourage them to volunteer to serve in the military and possibly go fight a war he and his government might approve somewhere else in the world. Somehow I doubt it.
Remebrance Day in Canada and Veterans and Memorial Day in the United States should be more about peace marches and memorials than those about war.
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