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Highway of implacable grief
Canadians will testify that the concept of peacemaking has not necessarily been a rock-solid guarantee of their tranquillity.
- By Mick O'Reilly, Deputy Managing Editor
- Published: 23:38 January 8, 2009
- Image Credit:
Highway 401 is the main artery that cuts across the cold landscape of the US-Canadian border linking Toronto with Quebec's border to the east, and Michigan to the southeast.
The freeway threads along the northern shores of the Saint Lawrence River and Lake Ontario, bypassing small cities like Brockville, Cornwall and Belleville, following the same route as pretty much laid out by the railway surveyors a century before.
If you're heading to Ottawa, take the turnoff past Prescott and drive the Veteran's Highway, formerly known as Highway 416 but renamed a decade ago to honour Canadians who served in both World Wars and Korea.
Canada has a long and proud military history; its historians look to the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917 as a defining moment in the development of the nation; its servicemen fell on the Dieppe raid, waded ashore on Normandy's beaches, flew flak-filled skies over Germany; drowned in the frozen Atlantic, kicked up the boot of Italy, and liberated hungry Holland.
In 1957, Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his development of the concept of UN peacekeepers. Those who wear the blue beret have served with distinction - regardless of the effectiveness of the New York organisation - easing the plight of the suffering in conflict zones.
As former warriors, the Canadian military slipped easily into the mantle of peacekeeping, serving in pretty much every zone of conflict.
And Canadian Forces have paid dearly for wearing the blue beret: When Israel struck into Lebanon in 2006, Major Paeta Hess-Von Krudener was killed by an Israeli bomb dropped on a UN observation post.
From the olive groves of Cyprus, the killing fields of Cambodia or the ethnic enclaves of the former Yugoslavia, Canadians have kept the peace with pride.
In Somalia in 1993, members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment sullied the nation's reputation of being the guardians of humanity.
Acting as members of UNISOM - the hastily organised UN mission there - Airborne troops tortured and murdered Shidane Arone, a teenage Somali thief.
A public inquiry, courts martial and the disbanding of the regiment followed, but the harm had been done both to the Canadian military and the public psyche: Peace keeping and peace making are not the same.
When Nato took over the role of rebuilding after US forces bombed Afghanistan back into the Stone Age, Canada enthusiastically joined the mission - an opportunity to restore once more that peacekeeping pedigree.
Thirty-two Canadians were killed in action in southern Afghanistan last year; two more than in 2007. In 2006, 36 Canadian troops died. In December just passed, nine Canadians came home in body bags. In all, more than 100 brave young men and women have returned as heroes, albeit dead ones.
And what of the Taliban over those same years? Body counts are not the gauge of success - the ragged bearers of AK47s and RPGs will always come off second best to armourers of any sophisticated war machine.
But there is little to fend off the suicidal nor the secretors of roadside bombs. From the dusty plains of Kandahar to the hilly Panjwaii, Canadians have had to tutor their Afghan National Army charges to retake and secure villages time and time again. Rebuilding the region means changing the mentality of a people long used to foreign occupation and oppression, a disparate collection of tribes fiercely loyal to clan and elder.
Heavy burden
It is this frustration of painfully retaking villages time and time again which is taking its toll on Canadians at home: There is little sign of real success - just real shows of distress with the returning fallen.
That Highway 401 which streaks across Ontario has taken on a new, sadly familiar mantle: The portion between Canadian Forces Base Trenton and Toronto has been renamed The Highway of Heroes. Why?
After the fallen are repatriated from Kandahar, the flag-draped coffins are driven from the airfield for official autopsy in downtown Toronto, before being returned to grieving families for the pain of pomp and ceremony of burial, either military or otherwise.
And a new ritual has sprung up to honour those fallen on their penultimate journeys: Before cortege and hearse pass, crowds gather on overpasses and bridges, waving the Maple Leaf, applauding their heroes. People like 52-year-old April Bishop, who braved the sub-zero temperatures and biting wind on the last Tuesday of 2008, to honour Private Michael Freeman, Sergeant Gregory Kruse and Warrant Officer Gaetan Roberge, who were killed by a roadside bomb near Kandahar.
"I'm not supporting the war," she was quoted as saying in a press report. "But I am supporting the troops. I will keep coming... I just hope I never have to come back here again."
Canadians have yet to come to peace with peace making.
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