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 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 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, Mike Weir 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.