A British news paper salutes Canada . . . this is a good read. It is funny how it

took someone in England to put it into words...

Sunday Telegraph Article From today's UK wires: Salute to a brave and modest

nation - Kevin Myers, The Sunday Telegraph LONDON -

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan , probably almost

no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops are

deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will bury its dead, just as the

rest of the world, as always, will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets

nearly everything Canada ever does.

It seems that Canada 's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of

its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be

well and truly ignored.

Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall,

waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out,

she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious

injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is

Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously

cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.

That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American continent

with the United States , and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two

global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two

different directions: It seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an

address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never

fully got the gratitude it deserved. Yet its purely voluntary contribution

to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of

any democracy.

Almost 10% of Canada 's entire population of seven million people served

in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died.

The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops,

perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of battle.

Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, it's

unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular Memory

as somehow or other the work of the "British."

The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began

the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half

of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships

participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian

soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the

third-largest navy and the fourth-largest air force in the world.

The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had

the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged

in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a

campaign in which the United States had clearly not participated - a

touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since

abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity.

So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in Hollywood

keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary

Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William

Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter

and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and

Christopher Plummer, British.

It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to be

Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably Canadian

as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to

find any takers.

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements

of it's sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware

of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and are unheard by

anyone else - that 1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the

world's peacekeeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century

have been the greatest peacekeepers on Earth - in 39 missions on UN

mandates, and six on non-UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East

Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.

Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular on-Canadian

imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia , in which out-of-control

paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then

disbanded in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for

which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.

So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless

friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather

like Cyrano de Bergerac , Canada repeatedly does honourable things

for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains

something of a figure of fun.

It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such

honour comes at a high cost. This past year more grieving Canadian

families knew that cost all too tragically well.