| Nov 18, 2008 @ 8:02 AM |
we're still paying the bill but it was worth it
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eyesofastranger
Posts: 930
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[QUOTE] British news paper salutes Canada . . . this is a good read.
It is funny how it took someone in Ireland 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 it's 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
Memoryas 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
non-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.
Lest we forget.
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| Nov 18, 2008 @ 10:54 PM |
we're still paying the bill but it was worth it |
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StarDust62
Posts: 360
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awesome article...........thanks for sharing............Lest We Forget
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| Apr 18 @ 6:37 PM |
we're still paying the bill but it was worth it
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Peabianjay
Posts: 1,790
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Kudos, Eyes! Great find!
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