seasonaly apt

[the last engineer]

Subject: British newspaper salutes Canada - Lest we Forget

 

 

 

British news paper salutes Canada . . . this is a good read. It is funny how it took someone in England 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 memory as some how 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.

 

*********************

Please pass this on to any of your friends or relatives who served in the Canadian Forces or anyone who is proud to be Canadian; it is a wonderful tribute to those who choose to serve their country and the world in our quiet Canadian way.

[monkeyjaimz]

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.

 

Lest we forget.

 

Spot on that

[harv]

you know who your real friends are in times of need.

 

1.1 million Canadians served in WWII, including 106,000 in the Royal Canadian Navy and 200,000 in the Royal Canadian Air Force

 

42,042 killed <LI>54,414 wounded

 

14,000 Canadians landed on D-Day

 

450 jumped by parachute or landed by glider

 

10,000 sailors of the RCN were involved

 

<LI>340 killed <LI>574 wounded <LI>47 taken prisoner

 

 

During the first six days of the Normandy campaign, 1,017 Canadians died.

 

 

By the end of the Normandy campaign, about 5,020 Canadians had been killed. About 5,400 Canadians are buried in Normandy.

 

In the two and a half months of the Normandy campaign, Allied casualities (killed, wounded and captured) totalled 210,000.

 

Canadian casualties totalled more than 18,000, including more than 5,000 dead. German casualties were 450,000.

[A Sick Old Man]

I was a Stoker in the Royal Navy for a good while, we used to undertake regular work ups off Weymouth I think it was called FOST, they were quite hard and the Ship as a whole was tested in all manner of operational duties.

 

The only Country to have ever passed with full marks from these work ups was the Canadian Navy, we could never get near them

 

A very professional bunch, quiet and unasuming, just the sort you need with you when it all goes T*t's Up.

 

I often feel a little bitter at how our Government treated Comonwealth troops during the various conflicts, but then we always have had that uncaring attidude from our "Better's"

[pavman]

....and lets not forget Rob Furlong Canadian Sniper elite, holder of the world record combat kill of just over1.5 miles confimed in Afghanistan in 2002

 

 

 

now they did not see that coming!