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.
No comments:
Post a Comment