Another casualty of the Great War
Six years ago, Quebec activist Alexandre Boulerice denounced the First World War as “butchery.” The war cost millions of lives and enriched countless capitalists. He praised the peace activists who, almost a century ago, tried to stop the senseless carnage.
Ancient history, we might think. Especially in a fast-paced world that measures its news cycles by the hour. But with the recent anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, Boulerice — now a member of Parliament — has been targeted by a strident campaign led by Sun Media pundits and commentators. And the prime minister.
Stephen Harper said Boulerice’s comments were “outrageous, inflammatory, unacceptable.” Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney accused Boulerice of insulting veterans, demanding a formal apology. Ron Cundell of something called VeteranVoice.info denounced the Quebec New Democrat for “spitting” on Canada’s history, calling on Boulerice to get out of Canada: “The only apology I will accept is when he walks off Parliament Hill for the last time . . .” hopefully to “whatever country he wants to go to.”
The message? Canada: Love It or Leave It.
A determined group of uberpatriots we call the New Warriors is struggling to rebrand Canada as a Warrior Nation. No more peaceable kingdom. No more peacekeeping. Their mantra? Canada was forged in battle and Canadians are — or at least should be — warriors.
Hence Ottawa’s $30-million propaganda campaign celebrating the War of 1812 as Birth-of-the-Nation. And that was just the warm-up. We are headed for four years of extravagant Vimy Ridge commemorations as we approach the centenary of that bloody yet inconclusive slaughter.
The New Warriors have conviction — and they have our tax dollars. A country that seemingly can’t provide clean drinking water to its indigenous peoples has millions to pay for a frenzied celebration of militarism. Now New Warriors seek to brand anyone critical of the transparently unlikely story that Canada was united from coast to coast by one battle as a bad Canadian.
Soldiers who actually fought at Vimy Ridge told a story rather different from the guts-and-glory epic being peddled by today’s patriots. E.L.M. (Tommy) Burns, one of Canada’s most renowned generals and peacekeepers, had this advice for war boosters: “Let him spend five minutes in a trench listening to the blurred wailing of a comrade shot through the belly, and if he thinks of patriotism at all it will only be to curse it.”
At Vimy’s 50th anniversary, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, called the Great War a “four-year aberration in human conduct,” adding that people must learn what happens “when the personal ambition, arrogance and pride of . . . national leaders and the nationalism and aggressive instincts of a people drag half the world into war.” That was the verdict of countless veterans who returned to Canada with the conviction that we should never again be involved in any such moral catastrophe. Many Great War veterans used the very phrase for which Boulerice is being pilloried: “butchery.” The First World War had grave consequences for the very idea of a united Canada. Just as the bloodletting at Vimy began, soldiers gunned down four Quebec City men protesting the new policy of conscription. Across Canada, most men of military age gave the war a pass. When conscription did arrive, seven of 10 filed for exemption. Conscription was deeply unpopular — especially among working-class Canadians, farmers and members of ethnic minorities, some of whom were sent to prison camps as supposed enemies of the country. Many saw it as an imperial war, with military suppliers its prime beneficiaries. Of course, other Canadians were whipped up into a patriotic wartime frenzy. It was a time, rather like ours, of intense official nationalism. Germans became “The Hun,” that racial epithet designed by Rudyard Kipling to make a whole people seem barbaric. What historian Jack Granatstein tellingly calls some Anglo-Canadians’ “visceral and racist responses” bubbled up during the war. Such nativism lives on in the New Warrior world. Boulerice has asked a crucial question. What was this mass slaughter for? What — apart from laying the groundwork for the even more catastrophic war that followed two decades later — did it accomplish? Can we honestly say the 20thcentury record of violent deaths in war — some estimates exceed 90 million — is something we want to glorify? Canada’s government and its New Warrior supporters would substitute patriotic propaganda for evidence-based history, bullying for human compassion. To describe the tragedy of the First World War as something that Canada must revere is to indulge in the most trite and childish form of propaganda. The New Warriors’ immature sabre-rattling is a reminder that playing soldier and recounting thrilling tales of glorious battles are not just suitable pastimes for little boys. They are suited to immature people of all ages.