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Thursday June 6, 2019

June 13, 2019 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 6, 2019

When the tide turned: Canadians hold massive D-Day event at Juno Beach

World leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, gathered on France’s Normandy coast today to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the remarkable military and political achievement known as D-Day.

May 5, 2000

There have been two commemoration events along the 10-kilometre stretch of coastline that Canadians fought to liberate — one Canadian, one international.

As many as 5,000 people, including French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, attended the Canadian event. Thursday’s commemoration in France follows another memorial, on Wednesday in the U.K., that was attended by leaders including U.S. President Donald Trump, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May and Justin Trudeau.

Their chests laden with medals, Canadian veterans listened solemnly, overlooking the tall grass and sandy expanse below in Normandy on Thursday.

Naturally, the beach today looks entirely different from the one that greeted the invading allies on June 6, 1944. The three major communities along the coastline have regained in many respects the sleepy resort quality they enjoyed before the Germans came.

Three-quarters of a century ago today, Fred Turnbull was sitting in a landing craft plowing through the grey, choppy surf towards the shell-raked Normandy coast.

November 11, 2009

His landing craft took ashore a section of troops from the Régiment de la Chaudière, a reserve brigade.

His first hint of the invasion’s cost in blood was the sight of the bodies of military divers floating in the surf — killed as they tried to disarm metal obstacles booby-trapped by the Germans.

The rising tide carried the landing craft over the deadly traps, but all six boats — including Turnbull’s barge — were blown up after they had delivered their troops and turned back to sea to get more.

Turnbull and his men had to swim from the barge to the beach. There they waited as the battle raged around them for three hours before a larger landing ship came in and took them off.

“That was the worst part of it, waiting to be rescued,” said Turnbull.

The soldiers cracked jokes about their plight and tried to remain calm while waiting for retrieval. One enterprising sailor liberated a bottle of rum from the wreckage — which no doubt made the time pass more comfortably.

June 6, 2014

Canadian military planners had expected 1,800 casualties on D-Day — killed, wounded and captured. According to federal government records, the day saw 1,074 Canadian casualties during the taking of the beachhead.

D-Day was just the beginning, though. By the end of the Normandy campaign, more than 5,000 troops had been killed out of roughly 18,000 Canadian casualties. (CBC)


A crazy amount of social media shares on this one…


 

Posted in: Canada, International Tagged: 2019-21, anniversary, commemoration, D-Day, dday, Ghost, Juno Beach, Remembrance, soldiers, veteran, WW2

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

February 3, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

Tuesday, February 4, 2014Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Julian Fantino insults veterans so he blames union: Tim Harper

When my cell phone rang last week, the voice on the line was agitated and somewhat incoherent.

It took a couple of minutes, but it became clear that Daniel was a military veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, feeling frustrated and abandoned by a political and court system he has battled over the years.

He figuratively pointed his finger at me and the rest of the media for not helping our veterans.

A veteran’s war story

“Please exercise patience and tolerance with me,’’ he subsequently wrote in an email.

I didn’t snap back at him. I didn’t hang up the phone and I didn’t accuse him of being a pawn of a big union.

That’s the Julian Fantino playbook and Stephen Harper is again watching what happens when the messenger, not the message, becomes the story in the protracted slanging match between the veterans affairs minister and those who served our country.

Ottawa hasn’t seen a communications fiasco of this magnitude since then public safety minister Vic Toews accused his Liberal opponent of standing with the child pornographers by questioning his stillborn electronic surveillance bill.

Fantino appeared bereft of empathy and respect when he belatedly encountered the veterans who were in Ottawa last week to protest the closing of eight Veterans Affairs offices on Friday.

They did close Friday, as some demonstrators shed tears and others vented their anger at their government. (Continued: Toronto Star)

SOCIAL MEDIA

This cartoon appeared on a number of blogs and news sites. Among them, the Royal Canadian Legion and Yahoo Canada News.

Posted in: Canada Tagged: austerity, Canada, Harper Government, Julian Fantino, soldiers, tearsheet, veterans

Thursday November 11, 2010

November 11, 2010 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 11, 2010

There is a bill we must pay

It has been often observed that old men start wars and young men are sent off to fight them. For all the truth in that, it lets countless others — us — off the hook. It is nations — the governors and the governed — who send their young men and women off to fight, to kill or be killed.

The reality is that most of us born after 1945 don’t have a clue what being in a war is like; even soldiers’ stories are often draped in the compassionate veil of time.

It is those at home who drape the war in glory, triumph and patriotism. We bask in the reflected glory of battling barbarism, genocidal ambitions, repression and cruelty. We feel we, thousands of kilometres from what may pass for a front line, are part of the grand fight for freedom, democracy, eventual world peace, or even the right of young girls to go to school without having acid splashed on their faces.

Part of the enormous debt we recognize in Remembrance Day observances and ceremonies today is that Canada’s warriors fought far away so we didn’t have to fight at home. Whether the fight is against fascism or dictatorship or terrorism, soldiers go to fight in our stead.

Soldiers give what we civilians could not imagine losing: a part of their young lives, innocence, comrades with whom they shared a bond forged in the military experience. They lose limbs. They lose peace of mind, even their sanity. They lose their lives.

In return, they ask us to remember. A soldier’s greatest fear is that he or she will be forgotten. In Canada in the past decade, coinciding with the passing of the last of the veterans of the First World War and the increasing thinning of the ranks of Second World War and Korean War vets, there has been a resurgence of respect for Remembrance Day, the veterans it honours and the fallen it remembers. This is a very good thing. (Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Posted in: Canada Tagged: Canada, children, Remembrance, soldiers, stories, Veteran's Affairs, veterans, war

Thursday April 3, 2008

April 3, 2008 by Graeme MacKay
Thursday April 3, 2008Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 3, 2008

MPs pass motion on lowering flag for military dead

A Liberal motion calling for Ottawa’s Peace Tower flag to be lowered whenever Canadian soldiers are killed abroad was passed in the House of Commons Wednesday.

The motion passed 142-115, supported by the Liberals and the NDP.

However, the Conservative government is suggesting it will ignore the non-binding motion and ask a committee to come up with a wide-ranging policy on when the flag should be at half-mast.Rather than lowering the national flag every time a Canadian soldier is killed, the Tories wants to put more emphasis on Remembrance Day, lowering the flag once a year in honour of all Canadian soldiers killed.

MPs voted Wednesday on the Liberal motion that would require a moment of silence and lowering the Canadian flag on the Peace Tower for all dead soldiers, even as a report recommends cutting back on the honour.
Jason Kenney, secretary of state for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, told CTV’s Canada AM on Wednesday that the current policy, which sees the flag lowered for every soldier’s death, hurts the flag’s status as a symbol of national pride.
Royal Canadian Legion and other veteran’s associations, as well as many in the military, support the position, Kenney said.
“If we had lowered the flag during the First and Second World War it would have never been at full mast, and so they say to us a country that’s in perpetual mourning can’t necessarily be a proud symbol,” he added.
The panel — led by Robert Watt, Canada’s former chief herald — would restrict lowering the flag to mark the deaths of current and former representatives of the Crown, the prime minister and the Supreme Court’s chief justice.
Kenney said the report recommends finding other significant ways of honouring Canada’s fallen soldiers. That could include lowering other flags at Parliament Hill, but not the main flag mounted on the Peace Tower.
He also said it would be difficult to have to pick and choose when different groups request lowering the flag.
“I think we need to take into account all the different days of mourning and anniversary days and find other appropriate national ways of acknowledging those, but to ensure the national flag maintains that sense of permanent pride up there on the Peace Tower.” (Source: CTV News)
Posted in: Canada Tagged: 1965, Canada, flag, military, Ottawa, patriotism, soldiers

August 30, 2007

August 30, 2007 by Graeme MacKay

Letter to the Editor:

Re: ‘A war of facts and feelings’ (editorial, Aug. 31)

I enjoyed the editorial about the Canadian War Museum controversy, and Graeme MacKay’s “museum bombing” editorial cartoon on Aug. 30.

I suspect, however, there are a lot of people who may have missed the point in this controversy.

It stems from a poorly written paragraph, on an air display at the museum, that begins with the statement, “The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested.”

The use of the subjective word “morality” and the fact that the balance of the paragraph is one-sided in opinion is the basis of our airmen’s outrage, and justifiably so.

While pointing out that 600,000 Germans died in the five-year bomber campaign, implying that our men were accountable for this immoral bloodshed, nothing is said about how the Allies were desperately trying to stop the production of the German war machine that was indiscriminately firing V1 and V2 rockets at the British Isles.

Nor was any mention made of the importance of bombing Germany to keep its air force occupied in the defence of Germany instead of trying to crush the D-Day landings and liberation of Europe.

While the museum questions our nation’s morality and the value of the air campaign in this paragraph, one would never guess from their interpretation that we were at war with the most powerful and perverse military regime the modern world has known.

It seems the museum lapsed into misguided political correctness over this issue and needed a blast of common sense or unbiased writing skills.

Hence my appreciation of MacKay’s cartoon and your editorial’s attempt to clarify the situation.

— Robert Williamson, Hamilton

Robert Williamson is a retired Canadian naval officer and a military historian.

* * * * * * *

Here’s the editorial …

by Kevin Cavanagh
The Hamilton Spectator
(Aug 31, 2007)

A fierce controversy reignited by a display in the Canadian War Museum illustrates the danger of letting emotions influence how a society records and knows its own history.

It also reminds us that sensitive and/or politicized outbursts can confuse a debate to the point where it detracts from the key issue.

The storm centres on a sign dealing with the Allies’ Second World War bombing campaign. Some Bomber Command veterans and their supporters demanded the museum remove the text which told visitors, “the value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested.” It also pointed out that 600,000 German people died in a five-year bombing campaign which had limited impact on the Nazi war effort until the very late stages of the fight.

Outraged veterans say the sign demeans the valour of the airmen, somehow casting them as immoral and accountable for the bloodshed.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The heroism and character of Canadian flyers, sailors and soldiers is beyond debate. Perhaps more than any conflict in history, the Second World War was a struggle between good and evil, a fight to save freedom from tyranny.

In the skies, nearly 10,000 Canadians died fighting the bomber war. The crews, prosecuting orders forged by military and government leaders, had no input on Bomber Command’s much-criticized policy of “strategic” bombing, which Sir Arthur Harris himself acknowledged was aimed at “the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers and the disruption of civilized community life throughout Germany.”

Our veterans should stand proud of what they did to stop a dictator, and Canadians must be eternally proud of our veterans.

But in the case of the museum sign, the vets are wrong. The wording is accurate and does not second-guess or impugn their integrity.

There is a cruel, surely unintended irony that the very people who risked their lives to defend freedom would lobby and pressure a museum to censor a historical statement that, however disturbing, is true.

Neither the war nor the bombing of civilians were brought on by the Allies. Hitler provoked the world into conflict in 1939 by invading countries across Europe and beyond. His bombers indiscriminately blitzed British cities with death and destruction. Because the Nazis had chased Allied ground forces off the continent and back to England, the only way to defend against Hitler was to bomb Germany from the air.

But by the late stages of the war, after Allied ground troops returned to Europe on D-Day, the bombing policy was under growing criticism by some politicians, military, clergy and others. Many saw it as a slaughter of children and the elderly, trapped in a crumbling regime led by a defiant madman.

Long after the war, the most famous symbol of that ethical debate remained Dresden. In February 1945, about 12 weeks before the war would end in Europe, Canadians were among waves of Allied bombers which destroyed the eastern German city with tons of explosives and firebombs. It is estimated the raid killed between 25,000 and 40,000 people. Such was the inferno that its glow was visible to aircrew 160 kilometres away.

A few weeks later, in a memo to his military chiefs of staff, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote, “the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of the Allied bombing.”

Our leaders admired the bravery of the aircrews, but archives show they debated the morality of this aspect of a war. Who was right?

That debate will and should continue. But the facts from Canada’s past should never be obscured or withheld from future generations. Our national museums must reflect the truth. This duty must be protected.

Posted in: Canada Tagged: commentary, history, Remembrance Day, soldiers, veterans
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