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Petition Background
Only three veterans of First World War remain. They are Lloyd Clemett
(106 years of age), John Babcock (also 106 years of age) and Percy Wilson
(105 years of age).
These three men constitute our only living link to the horrors and
triumphs experienced by the more than half million Canadians who served
under arms between 1914 and 1918. Yet, to our national shame, the proud
history they embody is fast fading from Canadians' shared memory.
As polls undertaken by the Dominion Institute reveal, barely a third of
our fellow citizens can name the battle of Vimy Ridge as a key Canadian
victory in the First World War, even when the answer is hinted at in the
question. One in four respondents thought Douglas Macarthur, not Sir
Arthur Currie, was a great Canadian general in World War One; a result
that reveals a stunning lack of awareness of both chronology and
nationality. Equally disconcerting, less than half of 18 to 24 year olds
surveyed were familiar with Lieutenant Colonel John McRae's immortal (or
maybe not) war poem, In Flanders Fields.
Why do we seem doomed to forget a war that is as important to
understanding Canada's journey from colony to nation state as, say, the
American Revolution is to the history of the United States?
From the Great War onwards, it has been the veterans, more than anyone
else, who have ensured the country understood the link between our
military heritage and hard-won nationhood. Through their once
million-strong national associations, such as the Royal Canadian Legion,
annual Vimy dinners, overseas pilgrimages, and unremitting volunteer work,
veterans have kept the traditions of Remembrance alive in communities
large and small.
Now, not only are the Great War veterans disappearing, but their sons and
daughters who served in the Second World War are, on average, 86 years of
age. Of these 200,000 veterans alive today, more than five hundred pass on
each week; an attrition rate greater than during the War itself.
The difficult truth is that the entire history of Canada's participation
in the wars of the 20th century, especially the Great War, is rapidly
slipping out of the realm of lived experience and into the fuzzy world of
second- and third-hand memories, to be passed along, or not, to the next
generation.
A national gesture needs to be made to mark this watershed moment.
The Dominion Institute is calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to
offer the family of the last Great War veteran resident in Canada a full
State Funeral. For a nation in urgent need of renewing the commitment it
made at the end of the Great War to "never forget", a State Funeral would
allow Canadians to come together to honour those who died, and accept, on
their behalf, the responsibly to keep their memories alive.
Detractors will say that State Funerals are only for Governors General and
Prime Ministers, or that they are designed to commemorate the life of an
individual and not an event such as the Great War.
We say for once let's cast off the usual Canadian timidity and
understatement when it comes to celebrating our past. If there ever was a
time for our nation to be bold and generous in the commemoration of our
history, traditions, and values, surely the passing of our last Great War
veteran is that moment.
The death of the last Great War veteran will be a litmus test for Canada.
Are we, in the final analysis, a mature country that understands the value
of honouring the sacrifices made by past generations to secure for Canada
the future we now enjoy? Or have we become a nation of amnesiacs all too
ready to sweep the Great War and its legacy into the proverbial dustbin?
History will soon be our judge.
The Dominion Institute
November 6, 2006 |
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