This may help you understand us Canadians

[Guest Newf]

This is a good read - 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 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 ourse, 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 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. Recently four more grieving Canadian families

knew that cost all too tragically well.

 

Please pass the on or print it and give it to any of your friends or

relatives who served in the Canadian Forces, it is a wonderful tribute to

those who choose to serve their country and the world in our quiet Canadian

way.

[Guest donn]

This shows how humble us canadians are,we do not care what other nations think, we know what we have accomplished.The only country that comes in to mind,that shows their appreciation is Hollend,and Canadians thank them.

Donn a Canadian

[StuD]

:canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada: :canada:

[Yammer Dan]

I for one would like to THANK my Canadian Brothers. Without them America would not be what she is!!!

 

 

 

THANK YOU

[Squidley]

An interesting read for sure, but I would like to get 1 thing out in the open here on what I have just read.

 

There are Many Many Americans that do realise what Canada has done with all the world conflicts. Many of us on this site just believe that when we talk or do things that Canadians are equals here. Whenever I host gatherings and post something up for Michigan it is always in my mind that our Ontario bretheren are just part of that mix. Not saying that your not appreciated for your own culture, just that your part of a family that know no borders.

 

I have met many former and active Candaian military folks, they are every bit as trained as all the folks I knew in the service when I was in. I still remember hearing all the stories about Canadians taking in folks stranded after 9/11. So I'll say it too, I'm very proud to call all of our Canadians here my friends, and hopefully I present myself that you can consider me one of yours.

[Marcarl]

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And Holland. WOW