Honourable Senator Dellaire,

I thank you for your e-mail with those comments about Canada and her soldiers, past and present, with the video of Mr Ignatieff’s speech in the House.

I no longer go to a cenotaph unless there are veterans from a local Vet’s hospital who wish to be pushed there in a wheel chair, and in the last few years there are very few who wish to do that as their new hospital has a warm chapel and a large overflow area.

A few years ago I realised that the ceremony was not so much a memorial as a celebration of the act of war and dying performed by those who sent the men and women to die. The Military Chaplain compared those at Vimy Ridge with those in Afghanistan doing their duty to support a commercial war being waged by some corporate entities who were not invited to come or to help with a problem the locals did not consider they had, and that comparison did not and does not sit well with me.

Terrorism is created by reaction to terrositic attacks by another in the name of greed or aggrandisement usually disguised as trade protection or resources theft.

What I do instead is go to a high place in Beacon Hill Park in Victoria BC where there is a huge Canadian Flag flying at half mast on November 11th. There are benches there in the open or under trees, and I can hear the guns performing their salute. There I think of my two uncles who died in WW2, and those of my friends who were killed in Korea, Malaya, or even Ireland. I think of those on the “other side” who believed that they too were fighting to defend their country and way of life. I grieve for them all under the Beacon Hill Park trees and hate the waste of human beings both military and civilians who died for a cause not of their making and not for their benefit nor for the benefit of their loved ones.

As young men at school in England we were taught to fight so we would be ready for the armed forces, and little time was given to the concept of talking to and trying to understand our fellow human beings. I am an old man warrior, brother to a real soldier, and with my “pen” I will battle evil just as those soldiers over the centuries believed they were doing, little realising that the same evil people were bankrolling both sets of armies for their own benefit and financial gain.

That evil, based not so much on religious beliefs but on monetary gain is what we have to face today, more so than at any time in our present civilisation. The faceless ones who control governments, who create hatred based on colour, sex and religion, who care not for human life at all. Regretfully those we elect in all supposedly democratic countries are subdued by these faceless entities, and forced to obey their will, not the will of those who elect and pay them. Such evil people who threaten not the warrior but the warrior’s children simply to have a bigger bottom line.

This is not news to you as you are a wise man with years of experience in many fields.

I grieve not only for those whose noble sacrifices were in vain, but also for those young people growing up tomorrow who will not know freedom, who will not know how incredible the world was just a few short years ago.
The next generation of young who may never see a whale, an eagle or a polar bear or maybe even a blue sky, a sunset, or a sunrise.
Tomorrow’s young who will be so toxified by pharmaceutical drugs and fake food that they will not be able to give me great grandchildren.

This is where we are going now and how did we forget the unselfish deeds of those men and women we sacrificed and then said we would never forget? We forgot because there are now Remembrance Day sales in stores open on what is supposed to be a Day of Remembrance, not a day of commercial profit sales.

“Lest we forget” is a catchy phrase which means less and less each year, and I mourn for those so betrayed by that.

Respectfully,
Jeremy Arney