Remembering

The pundits try to settle a 70-year-old score with a British brigadier, honour Canada's Forgotten War, and argue in favour of keeping kids in school every November 11.

The Globe and Mail attempts to settle an old score on behalf of the 2,000 Canadians who fought in the disastrous World War II defence of Hong Kong, half of whom were injured or killed. Their British commander wrote in his official war diary that the Canadians were cowardly, despite assertions to the contrary from fellow British soldiers. The Globe says the diary’s “sole apparent purpose (was) to cover the brigadier's own hindquarters,” and asks that the British government disown it.

Ontario MPP Lisa MacLeod has introduced a private member’s bill to make Remembrance Day a statutory holiday, an idea Sun Media’s Christina Blizzard does not like. She argues that kids should be in school to participate in remembrance ceremonies and that veterans “didn’t make the ultimate sacrifice so we could all get a day off to kick-start our Christmas shopping.”

Stephen Harper is in South Korea for the G20 summit today, which Sun Media’s David Akin says “gives Canada a unique opportunity to reflect on those who served in what is sometimes referred to as Canada’s forgotten war, the Korean War.” More than 26,000 Canadian soldiers served, and 516 died, in that conflict.

A recent survey found that Canadians ranked the most important developments in our history as, in this order, Confederation, universal health care, the Charter, and our participation in 20th Century wars. This is backwards, says the National Post’s Roy Green, because the middle two would not have been possible without the latter. This is a popular, but seldom explained, argument that deserves more elaboration than Green provides. His citing of Canadians’ 1942 battle (slaughter, really) in Dieppe, “ultimately of little lasting strategic value,” describes more the wasteful tragedy of those wars than their importance to creating our current society.

The Halifax Chronicle Herald’s Marilla Stephenson laments that “(i)t’s been a pathetic year of revelations about the (inadequate) benefits paid to veterans.” Add to that the scandal surrounding the circulation by Veterans Affairs of outspoken former soldier Sean Bruyea’s medical records, and you’ve got a perfect lesson in how not to honour our vets, says Stephenson.