Happy Canada Day! For all of us canadian A5OG's out there...
Here's hoping everyone enjoys their Canada day celebrations, but take a few moments to think of what Canada Day really represents.
Canada, one of the largest countries in the world.
Canada, one of the worlds most industrious and technologically advanced nations.
Canada, a country where there is freedom of speech, religion and beliefs.
Canada, who has a heart as big as the oceans that surround it.
Canadians can be proud to call themselves Canadians because this country cares about not only our communities, but the global community. Helping those who may not be able to help themselves and stretching our arms out to touch those who deserve the same freedoms that we may sometimes take for granted.
So on Canada Day, take a few moments to think of how lucky we are, and think of all the military personnel, police forces and service organizations, who are trying to show the world what Canada means. Peace, equality, freedom.
Also, for the often taken for granted and laughed at Canadian soldier: A British newspaper salutes Canada. This is a good read.
It is funny how it took someone in England to put it into
words.
Sunday Telegraph Article: 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 dancegoers, 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 its
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; its 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 D-Day alone. More canadians came to shore later;
Again, as with the first World War, Canada
pushed farther and gained more ground than any other nation,
that was just in the first few days of the landings.
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....
Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the
achievements of it's 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
on-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. ----
Tonight, boys the first beer i crack is for Canada.
__________________
PATNO
Last edited by patno : 07-01-2008 at 02:57 PM.
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