Gratitude
Monday—and it’s Canada Day. So I’m thinking about how great the Canadians are,
individually and collectively.
I
could get silly and talk about Leslie Nielsen or one of my favorite
TV shows of all time, Due South. But I’ve already done
that.
And Canadians are way more than wacky
comedians and upright Mounties in a cynical American city. They’re
even more than mail-order pharmacies and refuges for cabernet-toting
discontents fleeing whichever administration gets into office down here.
They are pretty much in every way the kind of
neighbor you’d like to have on your street. They don’t throw loud parties, or
park huge SUVs in their driveway, or toss their clapped-out washing machines in
their weed-infested front yard.
They quietly go about their lives as
conscientious citizens of the world, picking up the trash they find
(and disposing of it responsibly) and pitching in whenever asked
to help set the worst things to rights. They define the term “stand-up guys”.
Two things in particular I’m thinking about:
Teheran, 1979. In the midst of the chaos of the
overthrow of the Shah, six American diplomats were given shelter in the
Canadian embassy for 79 days, until they could be extracted by a joint
Canadian-CIA mission. It was an act of both neighborly kindness and extreme
courage for the Canadians to hide the Americans, especially at a time when it
was clear that “diplomatic courtesies” didn’t rate high on the Iranian
revolutionary priority list.
The Canadians risked personal
safety and national policy to help out six Americans, who’d probably
been trash-talking hockey teams right up until the embassy takeover. They
didn’t hesitate and they didn’t flinch.
My second example of Canadian rectitude is Lt.
Gen. Roméo A. Dallaire. Dallaire had just about the worst job of the 1990s:
Force Commander of United Nations Assistance Mission Rwanda (UNAMIR), from 1993
to 1996. During the worst genocide of the second half of the 20th Century,
Dallaire commanded forces without resources, with limited remit and
no backing from his political masters. I cannot believe the fortitude of a man
who still managed to save thousands of the people under his care.
Although at a terrible, terrible cost. Washington
Post reporter Ken Ringle told the story much better than I could, so
I’ll let
him do it. It was an impossible command, an impossible
remit and an impossible expectation. But Dallaire took it on.
I can just picture most American generals after
that posting—speaking engagements, management consulting, appearances on talk
shows. Dallaire went back to Canada, where PTSD led him to a suicide attempt.
His big public outing has been to testify at the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda against Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, who was subsequently
convicted of war crimes. He also advocated for children affected by
war—something he’s an expert in.
I cannot express my admiration for the country that produced people like this. You don’t think of them a lot, because good neighbors don’t get in your face. But you’re always really, really glad they’re there.
©2024 Bas Bleu
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