On our Some Gave All blog, I have posted an entry on the All Wars Memorial Toronto Ontario Old City Hall and York County Courthouse Memorial, Toronto Canada.
The reason I further note this here is best reflected by the commentary one of my teachers, an English teacher, made to the class back when my son had her in middle school, that comment being that Canada never has fought a war.
What a moronic comment.
This memorial, as the link above discusses, is in honor of the Canadians who lost their life in World War One (which the Canadians were in much longer than we were), World War Two (which the Canadians were in much longer than we were) and the Korean War. Just because Canada didn't fight in the Vietnam War doesn't mean it's never been in any wars. Not by a long shot.
Memorials like this one aren't unique to Toronto. I have to presume that the people who make such comments have never been to Canada, and haven't ever read any history either.
4 comments:
That idea that Canada hasn't participated in wars sounds truly moronic. I wonder if this is due to a currently fashionable idea that participating in wars is distasteful.
It might be, but I also think it's due to a certain American shortsightedness towards history. Because going to Canada was an option for those seeking to evade the American draft, and as the liberal Canadian government at the time opposed outside intervention in the war (which they were not alone in), the myth came to be that Canadians are pacifists.
But people holding that view seem to fail to have looked at the history before the Vietnam War, or after it. Canada fought plenty of times before, and has since. The Vietnam War therefore is a singular example, and taken well out of context.
Yes, that makes sense--people have generalized from the nonrepresentative example of the Vietnam War. Many of us Americans remember people going to Canada to avoid the draft during that conflict. But I was also thinking of something different, based on a trip I took to Sweden last summer. There are certain relatively unpopulated nations in the world that pride themselves on their advanced attitudes on social topics, such as environmental issues. They don't have the short-term memory of participating in wars (though Sweden certain did in centuries past). Therefore they no longer have war in their collective memory, and feel it is an alien experience. This is not at all to say that war is a desirable thing, but that it starts to seem unimaginable to nations that haven't recently participated in it on a large scale.
Although in Sweden's case, it shouldn't be as alien as it might seem, or perhaps its even more alien than it seemed.
Sweden rightfully feared what a defeat of Finland would mean in the Winter War, and therefore released its officers from service to volunteer to serve in the Finnish army, if they wished to. That creeps up on ceasing to be a neutral, in much the same way that similar actions on the part of the US prior to our entry during World War Two did. Sweden also supplied arms and munitions to the Finns during the Winter War.
Following that, Sweden, which had universal male conscription, mobilized during World War Two and feared that it would be next, after Norway, when the Germans invaded Norway. But it was easier for the Germans to simply continue to purchase iron ore from an independent Sweden as opposed to invading it. Indeed, the occupation of Norway proved to be a pain as the Norwegians mounted a resistance movement against the Germans. Anyhow, Sweden supplied iron ore to the Germans during the war, and it bought a very small number of specialized small arms from Germany. It's ground was, of course, also a haven for Allied aircraft that took refuge there after becoming disabled over northern Germany.
That complicated history has lead to a bit of guilt in some circles in Sweden, and occasionally Sweden will unfairly be accused of being collaborationist with the Germans. It wasn't, but it was pretty tied up in the war and was sort of species of participant in it, whether it fully admits it or not.
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