From the UK a lovely tribute to Canada and her people -
Sunday Telegraph Article
From today's UK wires: Salute to a brave and modest nation
Kevin Myers, The Sunday Telegraph 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 it's 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 than120
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 this 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.