War history
Pictou County man talks of Canadian war history during Lyons Brook presentation
Retired Gen. Willem Hekman, who served with the military in The Netherlands before moving to Pictou County eight years ago, says it’s our duty to remember all war conflicts and the heroes who have fought in them.
Since the dawn of man, human beings have picked up weapons and gone to war.
And some believe we always will.
“There is always fighting going on somewhere in the world,” Willem Hekman told a small group of onlookers on Saturday at the Lyons Brook Hall, where he gave a Remembrance presentation and reflected on not merely the two world wars, but the Korean conflict, Vietnam, the Balkan wars, the Afghanistan war and the war on terror.
Prior to giving his presentation, Hekman said profiteering and politics is behind most wars.
“Unfortunately, we can never have world peace. I’m a military man, but as a human being it bothers me, and I know why there are wars — politicians don’t want to quit with it because it brings in a lot of money. When a politician tells you he wants peace, that’s BS — if he wanted peace, there would be peace.”
Hekman spent 35 years in The Netherlands’ Marine Corps, before he and his wife Karen moved to Lyons Brook eight years ago.
“It’s a little bit smaller than Nova Scotia, and it has 18 million people. That’s a little bit crowded,” he said, explaining why they moved to this country.
A retired general, Hekman was a Marine corps SEAL, similar to the Navy SEALS in the U.S.
“Every person who risks his life for Queen and country is a hero. It is our duty to remember them — not just in 2018, but forever — and it is our challenge to tell youngsters, and the next generation, of their efforts.”
Hekman believes we should not just focus on the first two World
Wars but also more recent conflicts.
“We should talk about Afghanistan,” he said of the Afghan war,
where 40,000 Canadians served, and 150 of them died. “Canadians lost a lot of people in Afghanistan.”