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SPECIAL ARTICLE
Sunday Telegraph Article: "Salute to a brave and
modest nation" -
Kevin Myers, The Sunday Telegraph, LONDON - UK
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 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
provided10% 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.
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