A salute to Canada

Hi everyone-my mom sent me this article and I wanted to share it with you-I know I am adopting from the US and I am very thankful for that, I also know some of my readers are American-please note-this is not a slander or a jab at anyone it particular, it is just something I support and feel shows a part of the true nature of my country-I hope you can all understand that I feel proud to be Canadian.

Sunday Telegraph Article from today's UK wires: Salute to abrave 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 thatCanadian troops are deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will buryits dead, just as the rest of the world, as always, will forget itssacrifice, just as it always nearly everything Canada ever does. It seemsthat Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of itsfriends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to bewell and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands onthe edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. Afire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers,and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and thedancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she oncehelped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yetagain. That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North Americancontinent with the United States, and for being a selfless friend of Britainin two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn intwo different directions... it seemed to be a part of the old world, yet hadan address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it neverfully got the gratitude it deserved. Yet its purely voluntary contributionto the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of anydemocracy. Almost 10% of Canada's entire population of seven millionpeople served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadiantroops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order ofbattle. Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect,its unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory assomehow or other the work of the 'British'. The Second World War provided are-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and endedup policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attacks. More than120 Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the warwith the third largest navy and the fourth largest air force in the world. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifferenceas it had the previous time. Canadian participation in the war wasacknowledged in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor apart in a campaign in which the United States had clearly notparticipated... a touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood hassince abandoned, as it has no notion of a separate Canadian identity. So itis a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in Hollywood keeptheir nationality... unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford,Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William Shatner, NormanJewison, 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 ceasesto be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably Canadianas a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to findany takers. Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to theachievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world iscompletely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves, and areunheard by anyone else, that 1% of the world's population has provided 10%of the world's peacekeeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past halfcentury have been the greatest peacekeepers on Earth...in 39 missions on UNmandates, and six onnon-UNpeacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular on Canadianimagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-controlparatroopers murdered two Somaliinfiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded in disgrace,a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, theCanadians received no international credit. So who today in the United States knows about the stoic andselfless friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan?Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things forhonourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remainssomething of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which Canadiansshould be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost. This past year moregrieving Canadian families knew that cost all too tragically well.