When I read this, I was reminded that in years past there was a veterans hospital in Victoria – St. Mary’s where on remembrance day a group of men with whom I was associated would show up and escort wheelchair vets to the Victoria cenotaph. It gave them great pleasure and was a small enough way to express our appreciation. The Hospital was rebuilt with a chapel on site and the number of wheelchair vets dwindled. I made the comment on our last trip there that it would behoove us to stop remembering just the Canadians or Allies men and women and remember that there were others who fought for what they believed was right and suffered too. There was no dispute to my words.
That was actually the last time I went to the cenotaph as I was somewhat put off by the rhetoric about terrorism being the number one problem in the world. Now (except this year) I sit under an oak tree by the huge flag pole in Beacon Hill Park, smoke a small cigar and listen to the guns in the harbour and remember family, friends and people I knew who are no longer with us; and I also recall the hugely disfigured men of the German Airforce who stayed with their burning planes to steer them away from houses. At the age of seven I used to see them on the buses in Sussex and after the immediate horror we got used to them and spoke with them as fellow humans. I remember them too.
So it pains me to see the ignorant attitude and behaviour of Canadians who should know better. We like to pride ourselves on our diverse peoples and yet bigoted idiots stand up and criticize others for expressing their feelings for their peoples on a Remembrance Day.
Are they not allowed that ability?
Are they somehow lesser people than those who object?
Why are the Zionists and their supporters always right and in the thick of it all?
They may not be aware that they too are just people, nothing special, not superior, not specially gifted, their religion is no more mythical than all the others, even though they think their as yet invisible god has given them special rights….What? Before you yell antisemitic, not true anti-Zionist yes anti Jew no.
But my beef is with those religious bigots who do not allow others the rights they give themselves. In this land of division and hatred regretfully this is now way too common, and I yearn for the day when the Canadian sheep of all breeds will awake to who and what they are, get their heads out of their smartphones, look around at our fantastic country and start acting like human beings again.
It is not a political choice to do this, it is a human choice.