Canada

This is a good read - funny how it took someone in
England to put it into words...

Sunday Telegraph Article
>From today's UK wires: Salute to a brave and modest nation
Kevin Myers, The Sunday Telegraph

LONDON - Until the deaths last week of four Canadian
soldiers accidentally killed by a U.S. warplane in
Afghanistan, probably almost no one outside their home
country had been aware that Canadian troops were deployed
in the region. And as always, Canada will now bury its
dead, just as the rest of the world as always will forget
its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything
Canada ever does.

It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to
the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete
strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well
and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower
that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone
to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she
risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and
suffers serious injuries.But when the hall is repaired
and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower
still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort
across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.

That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North
American continent with the United States, and for being
a selfless friend of Britain in two global conflicts. For
much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two
different directions: It seemed to be a part of the old
world, yet had an address in the new one, and that
divided identity ensured that it never fully got the
gratitude it deserved.

Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of
freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any
democracy. Almost 10%of Canada's entire population of
seven million people served in the armed forces during
the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great
Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian
troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire
British order of battle.

Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by
downright neglect, its unique contribution to victory
being absorbed into the popular Memory as somehow or
other the work of the "British." The Second World War
provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a
half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of
the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120
Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings,
during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-
Day alone. Canada finished the war with the third-largest
navy and the fourth-largest air force in the world.

The world thanked Canada with the same sublime
indifference as it had the previous time. Canadian
participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if
it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a
campaign in which the United States had clearly not
participated - a touching scrupulousness which, of course,
Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a
separate Canadian identity.

So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers
arriving in Hollywood keep their nationality - unless,
that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford, Walter
Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William
Shatner, Norman Jewison, 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 ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret
Atwood, who is as unshakably Canadian as a moose, or
Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to
find any takers.

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to
the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of
the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians
proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by anyone
else - that 1% of the world's population has provided 10%
of the world's peacekeeping forces. Canadian soldiers in
the past half century have been the greatest peacekeepers
on Earth - in 39 missions on UN mandates, and six on non-
UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from
Sinai to Bosnia.

Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the
popular on-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair in
Somalia, in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered
two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then disbanded
in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement
for which, naturally, the Canadians received no
international credit.

So who today in the United States knows about the
stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has
given it in Afghanistan? Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac,
Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable
motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains
something of a figure of fun.

It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be
proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost. This week,
four more grieving Canadian families knew that cost all
too tragically well.

Yeah same here.... hehehehehehehehehehehe...
Sorry.... hehehehehehehe......
I only started reading cause I like South Park, and the song "Blame Canada" comes to mind......
Anyone like south park????
hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe.......
I love you!
oxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

^^ Why even bother posting, if you didn't read it? There was no need to be so rude.

Although I find this article terribly opinionated, I do agree. I, as a Canadian am proud of all our men and women fighting for the freedom of others, and I am proud to BE a Canadian. I think it is terrible that all these Candian actors are giving up their heritage to "get a better shot" in the U.S. I dont understand why Canada does not receive the recognition that our southern neighbour does. Maybe it is because they are the instigators, and a mission for peace is far less interesting. Though our men and women are dying everyday, no one sees the price we, as Canadians have to pay, but, we should not be in it for the glory, our country is there to help rebuild a war torn country, as we have in the past, and hopefully will in the future.

Shiky, if you have nothing important to add to the discussion, why do you bother?

this is so true.... us canadians are usually the ones doing random acts of kindness in BIG ways... and the US is always the one being credited and/or blamed for it. haha so there are two sides of it i guess. but thats what you get for being one of the most peaceful countries in the world

:) even hour national anthem is peace :D haha

I didn't mean to be rude.........

Maybe if Canada ever got in a war we could help it. -.-