Yeah and "Lest we forget".... the cost...

Korea, Haiti, Somalia... may not have been our shining hours, but those who fell... regardless of war or peacekeeping... regardless of how that conflict measures up in the annals of time....  fell and they had families and loved ones... we cannot forget we sent them and continue to send them and many of them paid and pay  the ultimate price.

I had a feeling similar to both above. I found the service far too much an adoration of the military. It became a celebration of militarism far more than a rememberance of those - most of them civilians not long before - died in our wars.

the US has militarized to an alarming degree, and I can see signs of the same thing happening here.

graeme

Behind the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa is a pavilion overlooking the river ... beside it are the glass panels of the Peace and Police Officers who have fallen in the line of duty serving the people of Canada ... there are over 700 names on the panels ...

700 lives given up in service to the people of Canada

700 lives that were given in defense of law, order and freedom.

Whether we agree with our troops on the ground in Afghanistan or not - they are there because the Nations of the World deemed it important and together we went ... 133 lives have been lost, and dozens of lives altered in that conflict ... Like the peacekeepers who have stood between warring factions in Cyprus, Somalia, Rwanda, Sinai, the Balkans, and elsewhere - they are there at the behest of our nation ...

Sit with a soldier who was wounded in Afghanistan and ask him why he was there ... it's not about big oil, it's not about political posturing ... they are there wearing the Canadian Uniform trying to bring freedom to the people of that nation. It might be a quagmire, but they are there in the defense of freedom. Sitting back home and criticizing them does nothing constructive ... I'd rather hear the voices of those who have faced the guns of war, and have come back forever changed, then hearing the griping of armchair critics who have never spoken person to person with a soldier who has walked in the sands of Afghanistan ...

Today is a reminder that OUR Freedom has a price ... and that price has been paid by men and women in uniform both at home and abroad ... we are honouring the fallen, and thanking their comrades and the sacrifice they offered in defense of OUR Freedom.

Probably he or she will ask you why the government has abandoned injured soldiers, including those suffering from PTSD. Aside from strongly disagreeing with you that "we" are there for freedom, I think that we are, to our collective shame, letting our government off the hook from their responsibilities in this regard.

Qwerty, you ask a very thoughtful question and it will be no surprise that I ask myself the same question about previous wars (I know, it's sacrilege).

nobody in this thread has criticized them, The criticism has been of the speechmakers, not  the soldiers. One of  those speechmakers I would put on the list is one who would give one in the tone you adopt.

Canaidan soldiers have died in at least five major wars in the past century and a bit. At least three of those wars had nothing to do with OUR freedom.

As well, I have known many soldiers, including some who have died. And I  can assure you that their deaths were far, far sadder than the than the picture you paint. I knew one who died at sixteen because people like you had convinced a kid that war had something glorious about it. He didn't die for freedom. He couldn't even spell it. He left school in grade four, joined at sixteen by stealing his brother's papers. He didn't offer a sacrfice. I met a neighbour who was with him when he died. It was his first action, just inside Germany.

"We were lying on our bellies in the mud with a machine gun cutting the air over our heads. I looked at. B. I think he was cryin'. Yeah, he was cryin. hell, graeme. He was a kid. he was sixteen suddenly, he jumped to his feet and the machine gun cut him in half. Craziest thing, thoujgh. When it hit him, he was screamin;; he was screamin'  for his mother."

On a day like today, we don't need crying in the beer sentimentality and we don't need shallow patriotism. We need to think what we're doing when we send people to war. We need to think of it BEFORE we send them. We need to think this is really somethiing vital to Canada's interest. We need to make damn sure when we ask people to risk their lives that there is one hell of a good reason for it. We did NOT do that in Afghanistan. We sent them BEFORE there was any discussion. Then people like you looked for sentimental reasons why they were dying. Don't give us that self-righteous support our troops crap. People like you are the ones who let them down in the first place.

NON Rev Shawn,

I come steeped in honouring service members. My grandparents and my father were liberated by soldiers from a concentration camp. My mom took care of elderly in the 1970's and 80's in our home. I had the honour of knowing a man who told me about Armistice Day from firsthand memory. He was born Nov 25, 1898 and his name was Ed Lofgren (he was like my grandpa). Every extra person living in our home was a veteran or the sibling or spouse of a veteran. My uncles served in Korea. My stepdad was in Viet Nam, enlisted not drafted. My sister married a Navy boy who served in the Gulf. My best friend was a Navy guy who took his own life before his minesweeper took a second trip to the Gulf. . My cousin did her time in the Persian Gulf. As a one-time member of Army National Guard, I never got called up for active duty. I was almost done with my commitment. Eight Texas units were mobilized. I finished my time and took up a sign protesting the Persian Gulf Wars the rest of I and II, as my step-dad before me went from serving to protesting US involvement in Viet Nam.

People wear the uniform for many reasons and yes they answer a call. They do not always agree with the call.

There are times that a nation you wear the uniform for stands ready for war when they should stay seated and times they stay seated that they should have had you on the ground running.

My friend's son just came back from Afghanistan and not all wearing the uniform think they are there fighting for anyone's freedom. Some think they got dragged into something by their neighbours that it offers more quagmire than possibility.

Honouring service members means honouring them all, including those who disagree. It means Remembrance Day it is about their commitment and their sacrifice, not about political statements.

Well NONrevshawn that is what they all say ... "We're fighting for freedom" and the uncritical will generally, like you, accept that.  I believe it was said they were fighting for freedom in Vietnam.  I think that they said they were fighting for freedom in Desert Storm and in Iraq and apparently, too, in Gitmo.  Remember "shock and awe" ... that, apparently, was for freedom.  People who wish to refrain from making historical judgments while the event is still transpiring and those who do not wish to glorify war are not "griping armchair critics" they simply are not prepared to accept carte blanche the assertions of potentially biased and self-interested apologists for war.  The idea of "fighting for the right" of "fighting for freedom" is just a symptom of a Whig interpretation of history where everything that happens represents progress and the cause of all "winners" is just and that of all "losers" is unjust and wrong. 

Like a lot of apologists and cheerleaders for militarism and war you want to say that those who do not rush to judgment and leap lemminglike over the precipice of war are somehow delinquent.  I agree that there is a price for our freedom and I would submit that that price is not to jump on every bandwagon decorated with a banner saying "freedom" on it (because after all they all have such a banner) but instead to actually exercise your freedom and to  take the catcalls and taunts of the mob and the demagogues who incessantly claim your allegiance as the protectors of freedom for what they actually are, namely attempts to deprive you of your precious freedom and to circumvent and denigrate the judgment of fair minded and peace loving men and women.

Leaving aside, for the moment,  the ideas that there may not be any winners in war and that not every war can be won, it is important to remember that not every soldier gets to fight on the winning side.  WE may not be fighting on the winning side and to a whig such as yourself that will mean we will go down in history as having fought on the WRONG side.  I would like our soldiers to have something a little more substantial than the weak (if convenient) assertion that they are fighting because we're the good guys (which is essentially the meaning of "we're fighting for freedom").

Now, having said that (and adding for good measure that most of what you have written is worthless fulmination), I have to say that I like the way your diatribe began about the "700 lives given up in service to the people of Canada" and how "they are there because the Nations of the World deemed it important and together we went ... 133 lives have been lost".  That for me starts to get at why we ought to honour these men and women and why I always feel so moved at a Remembrance Day ceremony.   Talk about citizenship and answering the call of duty.  Talk about doing a dirty job because the people of Canada asked you to.  Don't give us that tired bumpf about "fighting for freedom".  We don't require our soldiers to be political scientists and philosophers qualified to differentiate between freedom and tyranny or between benign regimes and malignant ones.  A soldier's duty to fight (and/or die) does not change depending on whether he or she is "fighting for freedom" or just to assure that the price of oil doesn't go over $100/barrel, so we ought to honour the grim resolve and determination of the real actual decision of each soldier to serve Canada because that is what Canada wanted (and not because of some silly concocted notion that they took it into their heads to go to Afghanistan to "fight for freedom").

As I said in the opening post, history will one day clearly tell whether Canadian soldiers were fighting for freedom (or something less inspiring) but right now it is too early to say, so maybe we could just honour them for their resolve, and the sacrifice they as citizens made just because we as Canadians (rightly or wrongly) asked it of them.

My aren't we ALL quite judgmental ...

I am proud to say I am NOT an uncritical supporter of the blithe militarism that marks much of our Remembrance Day commemorations, nor do I blindly support the War in Afghanistan.

I am and remain a pacifist. There are better options than armed conflict.

Having said that - we MUST differentiate between Iraq, which is NOT our war, and Afghanistan, which is good or bad our current war. They are two different beasts ...

I would say ALL of you missed my point ... in Afghanistan the fight is about pushing out the repression of the Taliban and ALL that they represented - is peace achievable?? I don't know - history awaits the outcome, but if setting women free to attend school, AND NOT wear the chains of enslavement that marked Taliban rule that's enough freedom to justify the involvement of nations like Canada.

Freedom is not about winning ... Freedom is about much more than that ...

Oh, and for the record - one of those 700 names on the glass panels in Ottawa is that of my father ... he didn't ask to die ... he put on his uniform one night and went to work ... he didn't come home ... I understand in a very real way the cost of freedom - it's NOT an abstract concept for me, nor is it something I blindly NOR uncritically parrot the rhetoric for ...

Qwerty,

Thank you.

At a Remembrance Day service like the one you envision there would be room for those who feel more villian than hero, those shattered by war, those who enlisted not out of a willingness to fight as much as a need for an education and job skills, those who still are confused about what their mission was, those who felt the mission failed.... those who do not feel like heroes but that they had a job to do... those that do not war is glamourous but that all war is hell and acknowledge that it is hell for all sides involved. Honouring those who served, means all who served.

NONRevShawn,

Afghanistan is not Iraq, but time will tell if it is a Viet Nam. What will it be for if the Taliban retake control of Aghanistan because nations cannot stay indefinitely? What will we tell those who devoted years of their lives, their children's lives, their friend's lives....it was FOR?

My dad served in Nam and he was shattered that his mission, as he was taught it, failed. He dealt with jungle rot and agent orange rash and even his battles with Hodgkin's disease. It came with the territory. He never felt bitter about not qualifying for VA health care because it was not "war related". He has however spent years of his life trying to forget what war was like and, like many of his era, trying to figure out what it was all FOR.

The time for trying to figure out whether it is worth the cost or a mission can be accomplished is before one single servicemember is sent there.

Lest we forget... the lessons are only really lessons if the lesson is learned.

There were no speeches at our city's cenotaph service today. There was a brief and appropriate reflection by the RC Legion padre, but nothing more. Whenever I have led such services over the years I have never had any speeches. Especially from politicians.

It is easier to say it was for this country's freedom or the other country's freedom. It is honest to say, it is because you wore the uniform of this nation and you followed orders to do what you were told to do, as long as you were told to and to stop when you were told to....

We are fighting to build freedom and end the repression of the taliban?

1. The freedom we are building is represented by a president who won in a wildly crooked election, who is notriously corrupt, who is an old warlord, whom few people in Afghanistan want for president, and who is connected to the opium trade..

2. Whether the taliban were oppressive is none of our business And we are, if you will close your eyes and think hard, on the same side that kicked out a democratic government in Iran, and imposed a dictator. We are also on the side that kicked out the elected leader of Haiti. Freedom has nothing to do with it.

3. the current president of AFghanistan, the one our soldiers are dying for, has exactly the same social values as the taliban.

What i think on remember day is how we should be a lot more demanding than we are in insisting we have full information and discussion - BEFORE we put lives on the line.

This thread is supporting Chamberlain's stance on Hitler ... if Hitler was alive today, from what has been posted above we could deduce that his treatment of the Jews is NONE of our business ... his annexation of various territories is none of our business ... his breaking of international treaties is NONE of our business ... his build up of armaments is none of our business ...

I will not liken Saddam to Hitler - Bill Hicks the comedian has a great shtick on that from the early 90's with the senior Bush ... but if the lessons of WWII and Rwanda have taught us nothing else, they have taught ALL OF US that standing idly by is not an option ... acts of repression, oppression, and genocide are not things we can cast a blind eye to ... Having said that, we can not cherry pick our battles based on political expediency, and natural resources ... the crisis in Darfur should necessitate the same intervention as Afghanistan ... Iraq was and is problematic because the objective was clearly OIL, and the goal was control ... but over and over the goal of freeing people from oppression falls hard and fast on the political machinations and political interference of those who are interested only in succeeding one dictator ship with another ... But as Brecht said at the end of his play "the Irresistable Rise of Arturo Ui" a farce about the rise of Hitler to power - we have an obligation to stand up and stop the bastards ... and that is what we ask our soldiers to do ...

Our ceremony was very respectful with no speeches.  The only thing that was close was a brief statement by the Salvation Army Captain before his closing prayer.  He said that those who serve are fighting for Peace.  Which is what we all want - peace on earth.   It was very appropriate.

Nonrerevshawn - drivel. You know nothing about Chamberlain's approach to Hitler or why he adopted it. this has nothing to do with the holocaust - and if you knew at all what you are talking about, you would that we did NOT go to war in 1939 to save the Jews. If you knew anything at all about it, you would know that Canada and the US didn't give a damn about the Jews, and didn't lift a finger to help them. In fact, we refused to accept even English Jewish children from England in our refugee programme. We also refused Jewish iimmigrants who survived the holocaust after the war, and we refused Jews who excaped Germany during the war.

You would also know that chamberlain did not fight Hitler because he couldn't. Britain was nowhere close to being ready for a war - as 1939-40 would show. And when the time came, it was Chamberlain who gave Churchill the crucial support he needed to get power.

oh, and if you knew anything about it, you would know Britain could not fight Hitler earlier beca\use both Canada and the US refused to commit t hemselves to help.

If you are so keen on attacking those who establish dictators, then may I suggest that the US was the onoe that helped Saddam to get power, (where do you think Saddam got the weapons, including poson gas, to fight his war with Iran that killed a million people?) withat Britain France and the US overthrew the elected government of Iran to put the dictatorial Shah in power, that the US has been installing and supporting dictators in latin america for over a century, that it recently - as admitted publicly by Clinton - supported a genocide of the Maya people in Guatemala, that Britain conquered one fifth of the world, plundering the wealth of those countries, that Britain fought a war with China to force it to accept opium in a trade that was still going on well into the twentieth century - and all of that is just a small sample. So tell us, our hero, when will you demand we send avenging to troops to invade Washington, London and Paris? For that matter, the gang we're defending in Afghanistan has exactly the same policies as the taliban.

Boy, for a person who preaches so much and so self righteously, you sure don't know much.

Gee Graeme ... you sure assume alot about what I know and what I don't ...

The powers that be knew about the Holocaust as it was unfolding prior to 1939 ... curious, the US didn't enter the war until 1941 - maybe YOU need to check YOUR facts.

Thanks for the history lesson - I know all of those examples you've cited ... what about Indonesia?? Grenada?? ... there are other examples ... none of which have ANY BEARING on Remembrance Day and honouring the fallen ...

Thanks for your thoughts though.

I just told you everything you said was wrong - you added irrelevant points - then acted as though you already knew what I said - which is bizarre since you said the opposite. You are the one who made the point we fought for freedom and to help others. Remember?

I know the US entered the war in 1941. What does that have to do with my statement that the US earlier refused to help Britain? What does it have to do with the holocaust?

Of course, world leaders knew what was happening to the Jews. They didn't care. There's a book on the subject dealing in detail with canada. It's called one is too many.

You said we went to war because of Germany's treatment of Jews. You have not shown a particle of eviidence of that. II suggest you go to a library, look at newspapers in your town for 1939 and 40. You will find scarcely a mention of Jews. Nobody in Canada cared. In fact, much of Canada was as racist as much of Germany. The same was true of the US.

Amazing. almost everything you said was wrong. And you apprently have not yet figured that out.

I didn't say we went to war because of Germany's treatment of the Jews - we went to war, and one of the out comes was the revealing of the depth and breadth of the Holocaust, and the stopping of Hitler's final solution before it reached its culmination. Admittedly, it was a side benefit of the War, but it was an outcome ...

MY point in refering to the Jews is your contention that we had no reason to do anything about the Taliban - a group that may be back in power when we and others pull out in 2011. I made the reference BECAUSE sometimes the internal affairs of nations are our responsibility as members of the human family.

The actions of the Rwandans was our responsibility - our Gov't and that of other western powers choice to do nothing ...

The actions of the Sudanese is our responsibility - again we do little ...

The actions of Nations that oppress and repress its people in brutal and ruthless ways demands action by those of us who may well have been ultimately responsible for putting those folks in power.

The litany of dictator ships that the West has supported or even put into place is long ... the interference in the affairs of other nations is a shameful legacy - but that's NOT my point, nor is a rehashing of Imperialist policy throughout the world that has lead to war after war after war ... the same Imperialist policy could be cited in the case of Gaza and Israel - it was the Western Powers who set up the current quagmire in the Middle East and we seem to interfere only where there is oil under the sand ... otherwise we ship arms and do little ...

At the end of the day - MY POINT - which you've missed - is that we have a responsibility as members of the UN (which is as political as it comes) to engage the quest for Human Rights for all people - which, to quote the Commanding Officer of the PPCLI who addressed the local Remembrance Day service here, means recognizing that many of the things we consider Human RIGHTS continue to be PRIVILEGES to most of the world - our responsibility is to engage by whatever means necessary to make THAT shift.

Inaction is not an option ... it never has been ... the current regime in Afghanistan is far from perfect, but it is a damned site better than what was there under the Taliban ... and yes, they keep revisiting some of the archaic policies of Taliban, but you can never put the genie back in the bottle - just look at Iran ...

fiine, and if we have a right and obligation to interfere with regimes that do things we consider wrong, when do we bomb Washington for its use of torture? The US killed at least two million in vietnam, a half million in cambodia, nobody knows how many in laos, 200,000 in guatemala. The taliban record, bad as it is, comes nowhere close to that. So why are we fighting in AFghanistan? For that matter, our side has killed far more innocent AFghanis than the taliban did.

If you are going to argue in favour of intervening in the internal affairs of countries you disagree with, you had better define pretty clearly which kinds of affairs you are concerned with - and why those. Otherwise, we have an excuse to invade everybody in the world. -and any such excuse will be used by people who want the war for quite a different reason.

As well, if you are going to commit troops, you have the think of the likely price, and whether the war is winnable. Harper has clearly decided - as he should have decided at the start - that this war is not winnable. and you just do not send troops into a situation in which they don't stand a chance.

Even if we win the fighting - who do we put in power? a gang that has exactly the same values and tactics as the taliban.

When the UN approved the US and NATO invasion, the word was that the Taliban had been behind the attack on New York. We know now that is not true. They weren't. EVen the "FBI has publicly announced that.

So what, exactly, are we intervening to do? Help little girls go to school? That is such a vital concern to Canada that we risk lives for it? Are you for real? In any case, there are  thousands of little afghan girls who no longer have to worry about school. they've been blown to pieces by American bombs or frozen and starved to death in the chaos of war.

Are we figithing to bring democracy? Are you serious? nobody in AFghanistan has any interest in democracy. and the "democratic" government we're dying to defend is a gang of thugs.

And you think that sending Canadians to get killed in that for those silly purposes is "supporting our troops?" I wonder how many more will die because of that kind of support.

It seems that the American ambassador to Afghanistan is in basic agreement with the thoughts expressed above by graeme.  The headline in The Guardian is:

Memos from Eikenberry state extra troops 'not a good idea' until Karzai government tackles corruption, according to reports

The link to the story is ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/12/us-envoy-objects-afghan-surge

Amen, Qwerty.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Silence speaks louder than words.

Perhaps we need more than a minute to hear.

Quite bizarre, indeed.

It reminds me of the same thing when I first heard Messr Harper say that the terrorists were after our Freedom...

The same things down South then happening in Canada.  And I wonder*...

I grew up with stories aboot the Canadian soldiers liberation of Holland.  Mythic figures.

In college, I started developing a point of view that the Soldiers were employees, hired to do a job.  I found that helped keep my romanticism at bay.

I've been wearing my poppy on a card, where I've written "Make <3 Not war."

Just a Self-writing poem,

Inannawhimsey

* I've noticed that some of the things that used to gobsmack me when I heard them in Canada are now, for me, part of the background of my life...and that concerns me...

I'm afraid we are seeing a militarization of Canada and the US. That is a real threat to freedom. We read, for example, of military officers going to the public to put pressure on the poolicies being followed by politicians.

We may not think highly of the views of politicisns but general are humans, too, and quite as capable of being inane as any politicians. It's a danger signal when they have the feeling they have the right to tell the boss how the job will be done. To use a military analagy, it's as if a general ordered a hill to be taken, and all the privates decide they will ignore that and take a differert hill.

Officers like Hillier go very public to put pressure on politicians to step up our effort in AFghanistan. These are the same sort of people who said that in Vietnam all we had to do was kill a few million more. In the US, I suspect American foreign policy is almost fully in the grasp of the military, and Obama is pretty much an onlooker.

There are people who will applaud that. but the history of military intervention in what were probably civilians affairs does not make happy reading.

There is a point I add simply because so few Canadian seem to be aware of it. War has had a greater impact on Canada than we realize. It's hard to get precise figures on war dead because the rules on whether war was the precise cause of death can vary.

But Canada has suffered well over a hundred thousand dead in war since 1900. In  comparison, the US has well over ten times our population, but nowhere close to ten times our losses. On a per capita basis, Canada actually has had greater losses.

There's another difference. The United States has been in a position to choose its wars. Even Pearl Harbour was simply a reason for a war the American leadership was eager to fight.

In the time, Canada has fought in the Boer War - which had nothing to do with us. In World War One which we entered only because we were a part of the British Empire (The US, though right beside us) was in no hurry, and didn't enter until 1917, There was a popular support for going to war in 1939, but it was not obviously a North American concern because the US, again waited until 1841.

Korea, okay, this was a UN obligation. But Afghanistan?

In other words, the US has been able to choose its wars based on American interests. At least two of Canada's wars, and the majority of its war dead, have come in wars that wre not ours.

We fought at least two wars only because they were British wars. We are now falling into fighting wars only because they are American wars.

That's what bothers me about the pro military, emotional tone of this year's Nov. 11.

Early last Saturday morning I had occasion to stop at and ponder the  cenotaph and Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa.  I never fail to feel emotional when I consider the statues there at the monument.  I have often thought about the magnitude of Canada's losses and one sees evidence of those losses everywhere most particularly in the lists of names carved on the cenotaphs in little towns and villages around the country.  When one compares the length of the lists to the smallness of the towns and if one further considers that most of these towns and villages are undoubtedly larger today than they would have been in 1914 it is impossible to wonder, "Who would have been left here with all those men from this little town gone?  What might these places (and Canada) have been had they lived and remained here?" 

Another place that a similar thought always occurs to me is at the Great Library at Osgoode Hall.  I was there the day after Remembrance Day so my mind was still occupied with the matters of peace and war and Canada's losses.    At one end of the Great Library there is a statue and stone wall about 25 feet high upon which is carved all the names of  the many lawyers who fought and died in the First World War.  I always think, "MyGod!  How few there must have been left."  I shudder to think of the tremendous wealth of leadership, knowledge and learning lost and at the civic and social resources erased that this single cenotaph in the Great Library represents.  If one considers that there is a similar list on the cenotaph or other monument in almost every town of any size throughout Canada, our loss is staggering.

I, too, have been thinking that militarization has been underway and that it is not a good thing.  I remember when Hillier was out on the stump cheerleading for our involvement in Afghanistan, I thought that he ought to have been sacked just on principal because he was clearly a usurper.  Unfortunately, principal doesn't seem to have a big following in Ottawa anymore (if it ever did) and it was in Harper's interest to let Hillier go on because the "freedom fighter" fantasy plays much better down at the local Tim Horton's than the "sycophancy to U.S policy" reality. 

I often think of Beaumont Hamel in France where virtually the whole of the Newfoundland Regiment was killed in a half hour. They set off across a field into machine guns firing five hundred shots a minute. They trod forward, each man carrying some seventy five pounds of gear and pack.

They had come from across the colony of Newfoundland, as it then was. And that meant that in fishing port after fishing port every man from 17 to 40 had gone to the war.

there were a thousand of them. In half an hour, without one of them firing even a shot, most of them were dead. And in fishing port after fishing port, not single man would ever come back.

In the VAncouver Library Archives there exists a few amazing photographs.  Some of these photographs give you the look of the usual BC logger as to the year 1910 or so.  He is tall as a tree, There are many of him.  They are long, healthy, obviously intelligent men.  In fact, you are astounded that men with such quality and air have looked for and are at peace with,  doing this dangerous  work.  And you  realize that this is the definition of North American rugged individualism.

Next, you will find some articles about the abandoning of the logging industry to take up the call to war.   Then there is a picture of these uberhealthy soldiers lining a street.

Then you will read an article about how the BC soldiers fared so poorly oversees.  A huge percentage of them die - in comparison to soldiers from the prairies, for instance, ( who were less rugged individualists and more save my brother's ass  --  ists), 

Then you will be so sad, knowing what a generation of men was lost from the forests of British Columbia.  An entire nation, of itself.  Indeed, a miniature civilization.  Perhaps the real BC died in WW1.