🚀 go-pugleaf

So well put and so true!!!

<myhome@mts.net> wrote in message 
news:qst4g49vphnod1dli48m6rj4cduhnfn8p3@4ax.com...
> 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 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, 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.
>
>