It's the 94th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, the battle which is now widely described, at least in English Canada, as the Birth of the Canadian Nation.
Although what they don't tell you is that many, if not most of the soldiers, charged up that ridge to show their colonial overlords that they were more British than the British.
And the only people calling themselves Canadians back in those days were the Canadiens.
But whatever, myths are myths, facts are inconvenient. And the historical truth that this nation was born of the genius of compromise not confrontation, is just too BORING.
Even though ignoring who you are, or pretending to be what you are not, can have catastrophic consequences for a country like Canada.
So on this solemn occasion, I thought I'd have a little quiz. And ask you to decide what military recruiting ad strikes you as more Canadian.
This one.
Or this one.
It's funny eh? If that guy with a tuque wasn't speaking Swedish, I would have thought he was Canadian.
My guess is after trying to be more British than the British, we stumbled upon our identity as peacekeepers and compromisers, only to give it up because it was too boring. So then we tried to be more American than the Americans.
And now we don't know who we are. And the only thing that holds this country together is its hatred of Quebec. Which of course in the end will destroy it.
Oh boy. I was hoping that this election would draw a clear line between the Canadian values we used to cherish, and Stephen Harper's Amerikan ones.
But if you don't know who you are, or what you are becoming, where do you draw that line? And if you don't recognize the real enemy.
How can you defeat it?
Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers.
I've never really understood the fetish that pol's, the media, and historians have for saying that Vimy Ridge was the event that gave birth to the Canadian nation. War, wherever, however, and for whatever reason, is mankind's unmitigated and unqualified tragedy. How there is any glory at all in the senseless butchery of tens of thousands of human beings simply escapes me. I used to be a militarist and a member of the Canadian Forces when I was much younger, but now I see war as a complete and criminal waste as well as an evil, evil lie, or as General Smedley Butler said after preventing a fascist coup of the FDR presidency, "War is a racket".
ReplyDeleteN.
hi ThinkingMan Neil...I don't want to diminish in any way the bravery and the sacrifice of those who fought at Vimy Ridge. And every nation needs myths. But the canonization...or should I say cannonization of that battle as the birth of this country is starting to bother me. If you want a good military story to teach children, the aftermath of Dieppe is a better one. When the German offered the French Canadian prisoners full rations and no chains, but the Frenchies refused and marched in chains across Europe with their English Canadian
ReplyDeletecomrades.
But as I said in my post we really should be more proud of the fact that we managed to build this country with compromise rather than war.
And as for war...I grew up a militarist as well. My family belongs to one of the fiercest clans in Scotland, and our fighting record stretches back about 500 years. But when I look at it with dispassionate eyes all I see is one good war...World War Two, one honorable disaster, Culloden, and nothing more than mayhem. A nation that looks for its identity in the mud of Europe is looking in the wrong direction...