Remember this? It's not happening

 

February 5, 2016 update:

Mother Canada, the 10-story vision of some privileged white dudes in need of a legacy will not be built in Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

Parks Canada announced today it could not support the $25 million project with so many unknowns, primarily money and design unknowns. The privileged white dudes, through their spokesperson, said the group was disappointed and shocked that their beloved cement woman had become a partisan political object.

They're not wrong, but that still doesn't make the project right. The only political support this project had was Stephen Harper and his Conservatives, more privileged white dudes in need of legacies. The Conservatives lost the election and their stranglehold on Parks Canada.

This project isn't being turfed because it was a Conservative project, it's being turfed because it's grotesque; unsupportable by anyone who doesn't share the same rose-coloured, myopic and misogynistic view of war (or just a sense of taste and esthetics). The privileged white dudes' website is essentially a $100k stiffy to trench and naval warfare, interspersed with excruciating design elements like the Necklace of Tears - a sponsorship opportunity - and Equality in Respect - a tribute to long ago women who kept the home front running whilst the menfolk were off to war.

Not that the men who fought our trench and naval battles don't deserve our utmost respect and gratitude, they do, but they don't deserve to have the horrors they faced glorified. Being cannon fodder is not glorious. It is also not the face of modern warfare. We pay no tribute to the fallen by holding onto a visual perception of long ago wars while we send our military into new and utterly different horrors. The enemy isn't lined up on the other side of a field or sailing off the port bow anymore. The enemy is tucked away in a highly residential area, ensuring high civilian casualties and no end of post traumatic stress. Today's enemy beheads people on camera and straps bombs to children.

This is not your grandfather's war. It's an entirely new hell.

Nor should the contributions of those women go unsung for even a second, but reducing the female war contribution to the most they were permitted to be 70 years ago, a 100 years ago, isn't honouring them. You know what women got after the First World War? A lot of shell shocked and broken husbands and sons. And the vote. After the Second? A lot of shell shocked and broken husbands and sons. It took a little longer, but they also got the pill, the workforce, and independence.

Today, our women serve as equals in the military, including combat. Get used to it.

Also get used to both our men and women coming home broken from IEDs and with heads and hearts full of PTSD. If we send them to fight, we need to be absolutely and utterly certain that decision isn't clouded by some misguided notion of the glory of war. Instead of aggrandizing the boys who lied about their age to die in a trench in the imperial insanity that was WWI, or be blown to bits on a naval ship in the south pacific in WWII, wars we won, think about Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. The wars we lost. The countries we made worse. The evil we helped rise.

If you want to pay tribute to our fallen, buy a poppy, attend a Remembrance day ceremony at any of the beautiful and tasteful cenotaphs that already adorn our country. Donate to veterans causes. Volunteer. Cast your vote for the political parties that didn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in court trying to prove they had no special obligation to provide for veterans at the same time they threw their clout and dollars behind Our Lady of Lots of Cement.

And for every last bit of grace and love and compassion and decency in this world, stop entertaining the idea that  more bombs and civilians staying and fighting is the solution to a civil war without an acceptable victor.

Remember this

A lot of words have been written about the proposed "Mother Canada" statue, a 10-story cement colossus to be installed atop an outcropping of rock within the otherwise pristine setting of Cape Breton's national park. Its named supporters are a who's who of the older white, right, and well off. 

The National Memorial website says "Mother Canada will stand tall with arms outstretched to embrace each and every one of Our Fallen who lost their lives in overseas conflicts, peacekeeping roles and Canadian missions."

The website imagery is dominated by the first and second world wars, which it names along with the Korean War. The 60 plus years of armed forces involvement since are anonymously consolidated into "peacekeeping missions" and "recent international conflicts". 

The only modern visual references are two thumbnail images, one of a blue-helmeted peacekeeper with a child, and one of a peacekeeper laying a rose on a grave. Consistent with the rest of the photographs, the soldiers are men. Inconsistent with all of the other photographs, one person, the child, is not white.

Setting aside the artist renderings of an 80-foot behemoth, the few women depicted are mothers with their children, stoically supporting the war efforts and waving their sons and husbands off to war. The statue is exactly that: a mother on a distant shore waiting eternally for the sacrificial sons who will never come home.

It's a rose-coloured tribute to a long gone era. A time when brave men enlisted to fight honourably for king/queen and country while women stayed behind and kept the home fires burning. The men died noble deaths and the women mourned with noble endurance.

A time when wars were waged against clearly defined enemies on clearly defined battlegrounds that resulted in clearly defined outcomes.

A time when we won wars.

It was a time when wars could still be won.

That time has ended. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, those unnamed "recent international conflicts" of the memorial website, the concept of winning has been reduced to a point in time; after which something worse happens.

We do not honour the dead by erecting a gigantesque replica of a First World War monument so a handful of privileged white conservative supporters can continue to celebrate their favorite wars of years gone by. 

We do not honour the dead by glorifying war. 

We do not honour the dead by romanticizing their sacrifice. 

We do not honour the dead by selectively paying homage to only those who died wars with acceptable outcomes.

To honour the dead, there is no finer tribute than taking care of the ones who make it back home. We have a social contract with the men and women who take up arms in our name and whom we we intentionally put in harms way. We have a sacred obligation to those that fell in our name to take up for their wounded brothers and sisters in arms.

The local supporters mostly appear to want jobs and tourism dollars. If we're going to pave paradise, erect a bloody roller coaster to go with that restaurant and gift shop and leave the fallen to rest unexploited and un-commercialized. Honour the dead by looking after the ones who make it back home. 

And remember to cast a harsh eye on any government that glorifies war while it litigates the survivors.

A Song of the South

I returned home from Little Rock, Arkansas yesterday. It was a place I knew little about and what I did know made me question if it was the place for a bleeding heart liberal like me. The recent news makers from Arkansas that trickled up to Nova Scotia did not inspire confidence. Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and the Dugger family are folks so far to the right of my social and political beliefs it would take Einstein's theory of relativity to accurately calculate the distance between us. Throw in extremely liberal gun laws and a religious population and it didn't seem like my kind of town.

On the other hand, it was the birthplace of Bill Clinton and a recent discriminatory religious bill was booted back to the legislators for correction. I pledged to keep an open mind. I also pledged not to talk about politics, religion, and gun control for the duration.

It takes a long time to get to Little Rock from Nova Scotia. Not being a sunshine destination, there are no direct flights from Halifax. Arriving late afternoon by way of Toronto and Chicago, the din of heavy accents that greeted me at the airport reminded me of the first time I landed in St. John's, Newfoundland. It was a homey deja vu.

At the hotel we were greeted by an enthusiastic and smiling young bellman who seemed surprised to have guests from Nova Scotia. Turns out he has a friend living in P.E.I. With a head of bright red hair and freckles, he could have been Anne of Green Gable's little brother. Hot, tired, and unseasonably dressed, the hotel concierge introduced herself and proclaimed "y'all have had a long enough day" and took us to our rooms for check in.

I learned this was the start of the southern hospitality you hear about.

The first morning of the conference, one of our hosts asked us to identify ourselves if we had travelled more than 500 miles, then 1000 miles. This is when I realized I didn't know how far away Arkansas was and I certainly didn't possess the mental faculties at that hour of the morning to then convert any estimate into miles. I am not sure if Andrea caught the dumbstruck expression on my face or, in hindsight, at a district meeting of predominantly southern states, it was glaringly obvious Nova Scotia is the furthest away, but she graciously said something along the lines of "oh the heck with it, it's Nova Scotia."

I still think the print Arkansas gave us would look nicer in my living room than it will in the boardroom.

As the day progressed some things became quickly apparent. The first was a reminder that I was in a room of extremely bright, well-educated people. It's one of the reasons I like these conferences. I'm pretty sure everyone is smarter than me and they definitely know more about what we do than me so I try and act like a sponge and soak up all they have to offer.

The second was that southerners elevate public speaking to an artform.

I work in a regulatory field and the subject matter can be a little dry, politely speaking, but not when these folks were talking about it. Between the cadence of speech and what appears to be an innate and universal storytelling ability, the potentially dull becomes dramatic, rich with funny anecdote and heartfelt sentiment.

Walt Colman was the keynote speaker. I had thought an NFL referee was an odd choice for a regulators conference. It was just one more thing I was off on. I learned if there is anyone who knows what it's like to enforce the rules in the face of opposition, it's an NFL referee. He's still catching grief for calls he made 15 years ago, even by football fans that weren't born when the call was made.

Coleman said, in the course of recounting some of the feedback he's received questioning his intellect, "that I may talk with an accent, but I don't think with one." It brought me back to Newfoundland and another culture unfairly maligned by accents.

I felt better equipped for work and life at the end of the day and, as it had been since I landed, utterly welcome.

The evening dinner came with a trio of musicians that sang songs I still know the words to from childhood. Johnny Cash was from Arkansas. Afterwards we watched a live recording of a public radio show called "Songs of the South". More excellent storytelling.

Also, there was food. As you know, I love to cook and no chance for regional cuisine is going to pass me by. I think I tried every southern dish I could name, including a crawfish boil. The food was so good I had to swap out my pants for looser ones mid Friday evening.

I had a dear friend, and now her dear spouse drive from the next state because no friend was going to be this close without making the effort to see me.

We went to the Bill Clinton Presidential Library. It's a museum of the Clintons' lives and includes replicas of parts of the White House, like the Oval Office. There's also a dinosaur exhibit to spice things up.

I knew going in I really liked the conference delegates, and obviously my friend and by extension, her husband. I also really liked all the other people I met while I was there. I had to explain where Nova Scotia was sometimes, but my first thought when I found out I was going to Arkansas in June was that it would be hot enough to go to the beach. Like food, geography is also regional. Arkansas is landlocked.

I may not have had the most flattering picture of Arkansas before I left. What I found when I got there was a whole lot of kindness, hospitality, curiosity, and above all else, an impeccably mannered and self depreciating wit. These are people who will go out of their way to make sure you not only feel comfortable, but also entertained. They are deeply involved in their communities and their families. As the conference ended, our hosts were on their way to other events.

As for headlines and news makers, on the leg from Chicago to Toronto I had a great chat with an airline steward from Cleveland, Ohio. Among the other things we talked about he asked if we still had that crazy mayor. After I realized he was talking about Rob Ford, because geography is regional, I happily gave him an update on one of Canada's loudest and most unpleasant news makers; and thought touché.