A Salute to a Brave and Modest Nation

[Prometheus]

Reprinted here is a remarkable tribute written by Irishman Kevin Myers about Canada's record of quiet valour in wartime. This article appeared in the April 21, 2002 edition of the Sunday Telegraph, one of Britain's largest circulation newspapers and in Canada's National Post on April 26, 2002.
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A Salute to a Brave and Modest Nation

LONDON - Until the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers accidentally killed by a U.S. warplane in Afghanistan, probably almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops were deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will now 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 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. 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 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 week, four more grieving Canadian families knew that cost all too tragically well.

[Axlfreek]

INVADE CANADA !

[freedom78]

I love Canada!  Here's my top five reasons (other than the more worthy ones listed in the article):

5:  Lower drinking age than the US...and we wonder why Detroit is crime ridden. 
4: When the sky in the US turns eternally brown, Canada will still be pretty!
3: Windsor...home of the prettiest strippers and coolest hot dog vendors.
2: Cheap (prescription) drugs, so that old Americans can live longer, and drain the system even more!
1: The elegant Moose.

[SLCPUNK]

[Prometheus]

I love Canada!? Here's my top five reasons (other than the more worthy ones listed in the article):

5:? Lower drinking age than the US...and we wonder why Detroit is crime ridden.?
4: When the sky in the US turns eternally brown, Canada will still be pretty!
3: Windsor...home of the prettiest strippers and coolest hot dog vendors.
2: Cheap (prescription) drugs, so that old Americans can live longer, and drain the system even more!
1: The elegant Moose.

you forgot a couple largest trading partner, and largest exporter of Oil to the US (plus we sell you natural gas and electricity..... and we got a pipeline in the west that assists the water supply for some westren states)

[freedom78]

I love Canada!  Here's my top five reasons (other than the more worthy ones listed in the article):

5:  Lower drinking age than the US...and we wonder why Detroit is crime ridden. 
4: When the sky in the US turns eternally brown, Canada will still be pretty!
3: Windsor...home of the prettiest strippers and coolest hot dog vendors.
2: Cheap (prescription) drugs, so that old Americans can live longer, and drain the system even more!
1: The elegant Moose.

you forgot a couple largest trading partner, and largest exporter of Oil to the US (plus we sell you natural gas and electricity..... and we got a pipeline in the west that assists the water supply for some westren states)

Yeah...those just aren't my FAVORITE things. 

Seriously, I love Canada, and it truly doesn't get the attention it deserves.  It's probably because you're generally pretty nice to us.  You never call us "Great Satan," or anything like that.

It was quite sad when those soldiers died in Afghanistan.  Though, Ann Coulter did then go on a Canadian show and got verbally bitch slapped, due to her complete lack of knowledge about Canadian troop commitments, which was fun to watch.     

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmcZG87Fmxc

[SLCPUNK]

 Though, Ann Coulter did then go on a Canadian show and got verbally bitch slapped, due to her complete lack of knowledge about Canadian troop commitments, which was fun to watch.? ? ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmcZG87Fmxc

She can never be bitch slapped enough if you ask me.......

[Prometheus]

ya i remember seeing that interview.... i laughed so hard....... but in her defence canadians did fight in the nam, just in amercian units, and at the time we could easily cross borser to join the US Army and Marines, now ye dont let us.... lol

i also think she said we done nothign in afghan as well...... but that im not sure of.....

[freedom78]

Yeah, when she says "they're lucky we don't roll over and crush them"...that's just silly.  It implies a bad relationship, where none exists.  The world's longest un-militarized border!  Though eventually, much like Americans patrol the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants, Canadians will patrol the border, to keep out our pill hungry elderly.   

[Prometheus]

Yeah, when she says "they're lucky we don't roll over and crush them"...that's just silly.? It implies a bad relationship, where none exists.? The world's longest un-militarized border!? Though eventually, much like Americans patrol the Mexican border to keep out illegal immigrants, Canadians will patrol the border, to keep out our pill hungry elderly.? ?

lmao.. and they better wach out too, cause we are arming our border guards now too LOL

[Lisa]

all I can say is once again I am eternally grateful for our health care system. I fell last week on the ice and sustained a fracture of my right tibula, blew out my ankle and torn the ligaments in the right foot. Now I sport a plate in the leg to help mend the fracture and pins in my ankles to re-align and mend so my ligaments will mend...cost to me after 5 days in hospital,major surgery, the works...18 $ , that was the cost of my pain meds when leaving the hospital cuz I don't have personal drug coverage. Health care has always been on the bottom of the list of the reasons why I love being Canadian, it is just something I guess we take for granted.