Michael Harris' Moving Mother's Day Story

Well today is Mother's Day which is a good day for florists, and yet another good excuse to tell your Mum you love her.

And I see that Stephen Harper is using the occasion to make us believe that he's on their side.

Today we celebrate all mothers across Canada for their dedication, unconditional love & support for their families. http://t.co/5AxJJcTzuz

— Stephen Harper (@pmharper) May 10, 2015

But I'd rather think that Mother's Day is every day of the year, and remember all the mothers, especially single mothers, he has done nothing to help.

Or as Michael Harris writes, remember the mothers Harper's Army has betrayed. 

Sometimes neither the pen nor the sword is mightier. Sometimes only compassion will do. I learned that lesson again when I walked into the living room of a couple whose name I cannot give you to discuss the plight of their son, who must for now remain anonymous. Two hours later, both of them in tears, strong people weeping, I knew I had to do something.

Or treated their wounded children with abominable cruelty.

Drug addiction begun in Afghanistan morphed into a reliance on painkillers. His marriage disintegrated and he began sleeping in the closet. He was overcome with the irrepressible conviction that something had gone terribly wrong inside. He presented himself to his base commander with a confession of illness and a plea for help. Tears were caged behind his father’s lashes when he told me the response his son received. “The commander told him he would give him fifteen minutes to resign.”

Like they have so many others.

Sometimes the middle-aged couple gets 20 calls a day from their distressed son. They are the only people he can talk to and like all parents, they do what they can. The visits to the military hospital are painful not only because of their son’s condition, (he has wasted away with pneumonia) but because of the look on the faces of the other young soldiers there with him. 

“It’s in their eyes,” his mother tells me, “a look that everything has been taken from them, a terrible emptiness.”

You know, as I've said so many times before, thanks to Stephen Harper I don't recognize our country or our army.



But I'll get back to that later, and what we have to do to get both of them back. 

Right now I'd just like to wish all the mothers of Canada a very special day.

Let's work to make raising children easier.  Let's make daycare more available and more affordable. Let's fight domestic violence, and respect women's rights.

Let's celebrate mothers every day of the year....

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