Remembrance Day or Veteran's Day?
by Tom Falls
NOTE: A contributor to the Army.ca web page, Tom Falls, was kind enough to let me post this on Milnews.ca. If you want to join discussion on the piece, feel free to click here. Thanks loads, Tom!
Well, we have brought this on ourselves. Today, Rememberence Day has gone from being solely for the fallen and organized by their surviving comrades in arms, to a government controlled media event complete with talking points geared for each age group, so the approved 'message' gets out. It is no longer influenced heavily by the RCL, and now has become a defacto Veteran's day where the emphasis has encompased the living veterans as well as those still serving.
To me, this is an abomination. The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month is on Rememberance Day. Every other day of the year can be veteran's day, but 11 Nov should be the day where even veterans can say "It isn't about me, it is about my buddies who never returned - Thank them".
To ignore military and veterans issues all year and pack them into one week tends to push rememberance of The Fallen off to the side. When that happens, we focus on the living and contemporary issues (like white poppies). Is that rememberance? The theme is "Lest We Forget" not "Thank those who made it."
The survivors of the Great War To End All Wars decided to stop calling it Armistice Day (though many continued to do so - it was the first name I heard it called as a small child) and instead focus on the fallen, not on the victory. It is slowly morphing into a Military Cultural Awareness Day.
The RCL, with it's declining membership, probably could not draw the political muscle to arrest this change even if it decided to do so. The government won't do it, as it is also a defacto "Celebrate Canadian Peacekeeping Day" and none want to talk about losing over 100,000 dead in our 20th Century Wars.
The day should be for the dead, not the living. We can look after the living the rest of the year.
Visit a Canadian Military Cemetary in Europe, and the truth becomes picture clear.
We have guys who spent the Cold War making Freddy Heineken a billionaire driving around with 'Veteran" license plates. We can thank them the other 364 days of the year.
Another variation on the same theme, courtesy of the Ruxted Group.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.