Monday, we commemorate the 101st armistice.
Such occasions seem to have less meaning to recent generations, as we lose generations’ first-hand understanding of the meaning sacrifice and the meaning of country.
Now that first commemoration of armistice was more than a century ago, we risk it becoming an historic relic where we can’t relate to its true impact and meaning.
This is a bigger problem than most realize, as evident in the angry separation talk we now hearing from those who truly don’t understand our history.
Those in the #wexit movement that hung a Canadian flag upside down the week before we commemorate the armistice certainly have a right to their opinion. Those of the greatest generation — and generations before — went to war to preserve such freedoms.
But maybe now is also a good time to reflect not only on a time when a country came of age but also reflect on what motivated those who made it so great.
Certainly, no one went to war for fantastic financial gain. The sacrifice of many who served actually didn’t end with their military service.
Many returned to a tough life eeking out existence on the farm at a time when there was not only no federal government subsidies.
Heck, we didn’t even have equalization right now that has suddenly has become one of the biggest political grievance in today’s political world. (Yet a decade ago we were being told equalization fairness was not an issue because we should instead be striving to be permanent “have” province?)
Many WW2 veterans were not immediately dismissed from service and could not pursue acquisition of farmland. If you were a First Nations veteran, you never got the farmland promised.
We just can’t compare the struggles, which is important when you are talking about breaking up a country our grandfathers and great grandfathers fought for.
Of course, this is not to suggest that the West doesn’t have grievances today like the carbon tax. We all live in the here and now and it’s legitimate to be angry when the natural gas you desperately needed to dry your grain at this time of year is hit with a further carbon tax.
Nor is there much doubt that this federal government has often seemed oblivious to western concerns and issues — exactly why voters out here voted against Liberals and members of other parties supporting the carbon tax.
But generations removed from that sacrifice — and perhaps the reality that governments can’t always fix all our economic struggles like the ones they saw during the wars and Great Depression — we do seem to have lost perspective.
As bad as the situation may now seem to be, are we to believe the #wexit crowd that a federal government that bought a pipeline and is now to court to get it built is out to destroy the Western oil economy as their rhetoric suggests?
Is it just possible that some of our struggles in oil and other commodities just might have something to do with world economic circumstances? And does anyone believe we could control these worldwide economic circumstances better by becoming a landlocked nation without a deep water port that would have to negotiation moving our oil through pipelines across what would then be foreign nations?
A lack rudimentary understanding of today’s geo-politics is also a problem, but the problem begins with a lack of understanding of our own history and the sacrifice so many made to already make this country great.
What would those who sacrificed so much have to say to those who now want to break up our country over the democratic results of an election?
As we commemorate the 101st armistice, maybe this is something else we need to contemplate.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 22 years.
