A Brief Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
This Remembrance Day – Monday, November 11th – is extra special because it falls on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Great War or the ‘war to end all wars’ as it was so naively called until a few decades later when the equally devastating Second World War served to place the 20th Century as one of the bloodiest centuries in human history.
A monument to those who fought and died in the First World War, near my childhood home in Chippawa Park in Welland, Ontario – a monument my childhood friends and I always found haunting as we passed by it.
This coming year, Canada will be joining the United States and many other countries in Europe, Asia and around the world in observing the 100th anniversary of the beginning of that so-called great war, now known as the First World War.
It will be interesting to see how our current government in Ottawa – a Harper government that seems bent on steering Canada toward more of a military culture that underlies policy in the United States – attempts to orchestrate this occasion. Will the government use it as an opportunity to glorify a military many of its leaders, including Harper and tough-talking’ sidekicks like Peter MacKay (former the minister of national defense and now the law-and-order guy /who never served in the military, to glorify all thngs military or will it mourn this war as the senseless slaughterhouse that it was?
Lest we forget, this was a Harper Conservative Party that went on record, while it was in opposition, saying it would have joined former U.S. president Bush’s ‘coalition of the willing’ and sent young Canadians to fight and die in Iraq – a war a majority of Americans now say their country never should have waged in.
I remember studying the First World War in high school and being asked to write essays on the causes or reasons for the war that cost the lives of more than 16 million people, including 59,000 Canadians – young men who were someone’s son, grandson and brother and sister, who were literally ordered from their muddy, rat-infested trenches to run into ‘no-man’s land’ and almost certain oblivion. They were, to the generals who orchestrated the battles, nothing more than gun fodder in a war of attrition in which whoever had the most soldiers still standing won.
But if you wrote an essay like that or argued that this war mostly came about through squabbles between a handful of European crown leaders, some of them in-bred, over who rules or what colony and using the globe like a Monopoly board, you’d end with a report card marked with an E or an F.
The only thing that did seem clear was that the First World War and the treaty that ended it set the stage for the rise of Nazism and the Second World War, and the end of that war gave rise to a Cold War and a nuclear arms race that threatened to vaporize all life on this planet.
Imagine what we, as a human race, might have done differently with all of those trillions of dollars spent on weapons of mass destruction. We might have used that wealth and all of the scientific and technological know-how it paid for to eradicate poverty and hunger on this planet, or to perfect solar energy systems that by now would have made the burning of fossil fuels unnecessary. Indeed, we may have used some of that know how to finally come up with a cure for cancer.
I believe that these are the kinds of things we should be thinking about on Remembrance Day as we pay respect to those who fought and died in past wars. I believe we should also make it our mission in life to finally end war as a means of addressing disputes between one another.
Earlier this year, I came across a bumper sticker that read; ‘I’m already against the next war.’ Perhaps we should all put that one on the bumpers of our car and make it our resolution as citizens and voters to live by it.
(Niagara At Large invites you to join in the conversation by sharing your views on the content of this post below. For reasons of transparency and promoting civil dialogue, NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with their views.)
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Very good article. My only concern is that no mention was made about the Korean war under the UN. This was one of the most gruesome and dirties wars on record.
A brief reply from Niagara At Large – So good of you to remember the veterans of the Korean War …. They don’t call it ‘the forgotten war’ for nothing, but what a butcher shop that was for those who were sent to fight there and again, for what. Look at the mad nightmare that constitutes North Korea now.
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I am going to remember and I hope people also appreciate that those self-less individuals that answered the call and went to war did that to protect our way of life, a peaceful way of life. They collaborated to remove from power those that would dictate and commit atrocities against their own people. Sometimes just because of ethnic reasoning or cultural feud. These self-less individuals fought for those that could not fight for themselves and sent the message that the type of behaviour they were fighting against would not be tolerated in the interest of maintaining world peace.
I am also going to remember how the PAST AND PRESENT government is hanging these heroes out to dry all the while having resources to waste and fritter away like it was nothing.
Hats off to all of you who have served and will serve in the future. Hats off to you and your families for they too must not be forgotten and their sacrifice must also be recognized.
Just sayin….
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I think I understand where you are coming from on this one Doug, but at the same time, I have some serious concerns about how you have presented it.
Most old soldiers will tell you they will not glorify war. Far from it. Old soldiers are the original “peaceniks.”
It is those who have never seen war first-hand who glorify it. The professional politicians who hide at home and look for ways to screw over the soldiers and veterans who so willingly put their lives on the line.
Politicians like George W Bush, Pierre E Trudeau, Steven Harper, Brian Mulroney, John Turner, William Clinton, Richard Nixon are the ones I am talking about. They didn’t do actual military service. I know, I know, Bush supposedly served in the Air National Guard, but they really have trouble finding any real records that prove he did anything!
My father died in 1980. He was only 66 years old. His relatively early death was due largely to what happened to him during World War 2. He enlisted in the British Army and served all through North Africa and Italy. The only time he got home during the war was when he was wounded.
He appeared to be a normal man when he returned, but as the years went on, the effects of what he saw and what he had to do during the war, turned him into a broken shell of a man. His pension was about $10 per month.
My mother-in-law is now 104 years old and living in a long-term care facility. They held a Remembrance Day service there today. My partner, Sandra, went as well to be with her mother in remembering Sandra’s father who was away from his home in Hamilton for more than five years. Remembrance Day is always extremely important to my mother-in-law. But at the service this year, they had someone singing the old Vera Lynn songs “Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs Of Dover” “We’ll Meet Again” and others. My mother-in-law broke down as the songs were being sung.
Most people consider those songs to be songs of hope. To my mother-in-law, they are songs of fear and despair. She would go months not knowing if her husband and the father of her three small children, was dead or alive. At the same time, two months after he was sent overseas, she and the children were evicted from their rented home because the landlord wasn’t sure she would be able to pay the rent if her husband was killed.
Today, I look around and I see our federal government cutting back on services to our veterans, in the interests of “saving money.” Although I consider myself a small-c conservative, I am appalled and ashamed of what our government is doing.
I am further appalled and ashamed of how the Canadian Forces deals with our young men to come back from overseas with a variety of injuries or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Many of these young men are being dumped from the forces, just before they would otherwise qualify for a pension. That type of treatment smacks of the worst aspects of the U-S business system. Screw your employee for all you can!
As a resident of Canada, I am ashamed of what my government is doing in that regard.
I do not see the government of Canada as supporting the military – far from it! Our troops must often “make do” with equipment that is outdated, in poor repair and dangerous. That is not a sign of a government that wants to expand militarily.
It is a sign of a government that is doesn’t care about the people. It is a government that only cares about the business bottom line.
It seems that when I sit down to try to get my thoughts on a subject down on paper, I tend to ramble a bit. I apologize for that.
I will try to wrap things up succinctly: I support the men and women who put their lives on the line to defend us and our way of life. I am ashamed of the way our government treats them!
All politicians, of all political parties should hang their heads in shame.
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Thank you Will for saying what most of us think and thank you for your family’s service.
My father served in the RCAF in England and Europe, I lost cousins in France and Holland and had an uncle with terrible PTSD who ended up dying of alcoholism. War sucks.
Canada must regain its good reputation as peace keepers. Not likely under Harper the chicken hawk.
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All Canadians should visit the National War Museum in Ottawa. It should be called the National Anti War Museum. While it respects our war heritage it does not glorify war. That is as it should be. Canada has a proud war history. In WW1 a country with a population of 8 million had volunteerism of 600,000+ not counting Newfoundland and they were the “storm troopers” who took what no one else could, Vimy and Paschendale. In WW2 Canadians made the greatest inroads on D-Day and were almost solely responsible for the convoys which kept England alive.
I agree that one of our wisest moves was NOT going into Iraq. It was illegal and under false information. Now that country is a mess and many Iraqi innocents, Americans and Brits died for nothing unless you count the military industrial complex.
I wonder how many Americans remember that they boycotted the Olympics when Russia was in Afghanistan. Where are the American troops now? In Afghanistan. They also armed the Taliban against Russia.
The stupidity of war never ends. It just keeps going in circles.
As Jimi Hendrix (not known as a philosopher) said….”When the power of love is greater than the love of power, only then will there be peace.”
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“Lest We Forget” – How CAN we forget when wars continue even now; when wars against others, including the animals and the planet, occur every single day?
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I am simply humbled by the report and comments. My husband and I have no ancestor involved in any way, yet attend the Cenotaph on Nov 11th regularly (Very chilly, windy yesterday) to acknowledge what other Canadians have done for us, for our children. Very moving accounts above.
Thanks.
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