Remembrance Day and St. James Church, 2012

Dad served in the RCAF during WWII. I remember his blue uniform as a child. Remembrance Day was important to him. He loved the Ottawa Air Museum where in later years he liked stand by the Lancaster Bomber and remember . Occasionally he mentioned friends who didn't come back. I'm reading GAS! The Battle for Ypres, 1915 by James L. McWilliams and R. James Steel, a well written, well researched, moving history indeed. I was honoured to have treated a Vimy Ridge survivor in my first year of country general practice. He was a very intelligent elderly gentleman who I saw for lung disease. He'd been only a little scathed by gas attacks. On his visits though he'd share stories of those long past days when his Ross Rifle jammed. "It wasn't so bad though because I could pick up an Enfield off one of the many fallen Brits around us." Today is Remembrance Day. My friend told me his grandfather rode in the Canadian Cavalry in WWI telling him he figured he survived because on a horse he was above the height everyone was shooting at. I was reminded of the brilliant novel, Soldier of the Horse, by Robert Mackie based on the stories his family told of the 'Great War'. Our friends' son was in Kundahar, Afghanistan. She was sharing this summer a mother's pride in his service, achievements and advancement. When he was over there, t was a hard time for him and for those who loved him. She admired his courage and his sense of duty. So many young people lack purpose or meaning. I see the drug addicts and alcoholics whose lives of pleasure and deceit are so shallow in comparison with the friends I've known who understood the truth and meaning of service and altruism in contrast to the utter narcissism of the "party scene". Over the years I've treated Vets from all the wars of the 20ths and 21st century. Men have told me over and over of the horrors they encountered in Europe, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cypress, South America, Central America, Africa. Some volunteered. Some were conscripted. A white South Afrikaner told me "I killed them in the night when they were trying to kill my mother and father asleep upstairs." "Kill or be killed", was the law of the jungle for many and war was a return to the very jungle we all came from. Thanks to our Canadian soldiers, the Brits, NATO, and especially the American soldiers I've known a life time of relative safety and civilization for which I'm truly thankful. All the refugees I've seen in my office remind me how lucky we are to be in Canada with the governments we have had and their concern for defence. For so many who have not faced those who want your life and all you possess because they believe their might entitles them to it ,they probably don't understand what all the unsung heroes of Remembrance Day talk is about. It is the very success of the Canadian soldiers that we don't know what it is that they have done for us. That said, I can also say the Canadian media, especially CBC, has been utterly nauseating in it's coverage of Canada's military service overseas these last years. Thanks to the ignorance of the Canadian media the average Canadian doesn't even know where the Canadians have been deployed and what their part has been around the world in countless peacekeeping actions.I only learn from the men and women themselves who tell me what the media fails to report. Thankfully there is Remembrance Day each year. Poppies go on sale. I remember the poem Flanders Fields written by a doctor sleepless after days and nights on the front serving. I was thankful for the genius writing of Kevin Patterson, Canadian doctor, whose book "Outside the Wire" remains a classic of the Afghanistan war telling the story of that conflict in the words of the participants. At church today I was grateful to catch the end of Father Mark Greenaway Robbins sermon of thanks this important day. Tom, Gilbert and I were glad to be there for Remembrance Day. It was a blessing to join with the choir and congregation singing "Our God Our Help in Ages Past, remembering all the years of church with my now departed father and mother as we sang this very hymn in days gone past. Dad and Mom met during WWII, were married for 60 years, 'till death do us part'. Dad was proud of his service in the RCAF. I was proud of my Dad. Today I'm thankful for all the soldiers who have served so that we can know peace. It was good too to see AJ and 3 week old Alex, so full of promise in his new life. After church we congregated downstairs for conversation, coffee and cookies. Gilbert visited with the other dog that had come to church that day.

F35 and Liberal Lies

The F35 Joint Strike Fighter plot thickens. It turns out that the Liberal party was actually part of the research and development, coupled with allies, including obviously the United States, which 'chose' the F35. The Liberals  may well have contributed $150 million to the F35.  The key politically is that Ignatieff is claiming that we should spend that money on babies.  It's a 'hearts and minds' election attack. Blame the Conservatives and then screw everyone.  It naturally screws the allies,  researchers, developers, the military and the air force men and women.  But in an election screwing the military is a great 'hearts and minds' tactic.  The key is that Ignatieff wants more money to pay beaurocrats.  With the "health care' spending by Liberals we didn't get more MRI's or more resources but we got more Administration and more Legislation.  Now here is history repeating itself for the Liberals with the military and the F35.

See what David Krayton says:

"But the Liberals have done this before, and the dreadful legacy of the EH-101 helicopter was the result. The Brian Mulroney government had initially ordered 50 of these helicopters to replace both the Labrador search and rescue helicopter and the Sea King shipborne helicopter. New PM Kim Campbell downgraded that order to 35 but that was still too much for the Liberal Party. In 1993, when the decade of despair commenced, Jean Chretien cancelled the EH-101, claiming it was a “Cadillac” and that the Canadian military should never require any product approaching the best. The chopper cancellation played a large part in that year’s election campaign and Chretien kept his promise. The result was 10 years of chaos and cancellation fees. The Liberal government ultimately turned around at bought the EH-101 as the search and rescue replacement (now called the Cormorant so nobody would notice that it was the same aircraft) and dithered about replacing the Sea King to the point that Air Force crews aboard Navy ships are still flying the 48-year-old helicopter and waiting for the delivery of the 24 Cyclone replacements. This is precisely the road that Ignatieff wants to take us down – again.

It’s a road that should be far less travelled."

Note the same language, the F35 was also called a "cadillac'. Ignatieff can't even come up with his own ideas. As a former professor he should be failed for plagiarizing.

F35 and the Liberals

i was delighted to hear from a friend, a staunch liberal, what he thought about the F35.  "I wish Canadians would realize that the Americans were the threat."  It reminded me of the Quebecois and their desire to 'separate'.  I remember wanting to be separate from the US.  Personallyt I've wanted to be on another planet.  I remember well how we loved Guess Who's "American Women" . "Don't come knocking around my door no more.....don't want your war machines."
The fact for me is that America is the Roman Empire. Soon China may be the next Empire.  It's no longer the good guys and the bad guys.  It's mercenaries and Star wars.  In the end Princess Liah divorced.  Microcosms and macrocosms.  Paul Simon, 50 ways to leave a lover.
I looked at my friend. We're old now. We broke down singing protest songs from our youth.   I was trying to tell him how the only competitive planes to the F35 cost around 100 millions themselves.  There's no cheap alternative.  I said, "I don't want Canadians to be in yesterday's technology. I want them to be in the F35 since that stealth fighter is the best there is today."
My friend simply didn't want war.  I could see Country Joe and the Fish in his eyes.   He and I both wanted another time and place where we could believe in peace. We wanted to be back before disco.  Before cocaine. Before dot com bubbles.   I never was in favour of unilateral disarmament but I sure like Rosa Parks. I miss Gonzo journalism too.
In Egypt they got rid of Mubarek with not that much blood shed. Ghadaffi is another matter.  I marched and was billy clubbed in peace demonstrations. It was before CNN censorship.    I became a doctor to be a healer.  But somewhere I lost the faith my friend still had.  I'd become conservative in old age.  Maybe the abortions and euthanasia got to me. I wanted life and the world was dying before my eyes.  Maybe I was just slipping away. it's confusing.  The lines were alot clearer in Sunday school.
"What's the alternative to America as the Emperor, China, Saudi Arabia?" l asked."it's one thing to criticize, you've got to have a solution.'
"We should be like Switzerland.  We should declare neutrality. We should just get out of NATO and no longer be apart of the American mercenary empire."
I liked that but I was thinking of Troudeau who said that when the elephant america rolled over, the mouse Canada had to pay attention.  America might just take the water and the land and annex us for their Homeland Security.  It's not the 1812 war any more.  I'd like to wait till we have F35 before we tell America what we're going to do.  But by then China or Iran might well want to invade Canada.  Invading Canada isn't so far fetched anymore.  l remember when the older men talked about the Korean War. They threw men at the Western forces like they were bullets.
Another  friend who married and lived in China for years said, "You don't understand how little life is valued there, in their factories, in there streets.  In their mind, they've got a billion too many people.. They've got no women for their men and an whole lot of single men in uniform.  They don't have Gorlia Steinem feminism because they aborted her and her sisters before they had a chance to call all men rapists and pedophiles.  We squeal when we lose a woman captain in Kandahar.  They don't have a free press.  No one knows what's going on."
I remember all the men with guns I've seen. They're all afraid.  I'm afraid.  I'm an old man and the old tyrants don't want to face their past. They don't want to give up their power, their luxury and their security. I don't want to give up my youth or my idealism.
Gandhi's peace demonstration gave rise to the division between India and Pakistan.  India is worried that the 100 million dollar Chinese jet that's like the F35 surpasses everything the Indians have.  India has China and it's massive army poised on it's border.  There's been war there before.  Iran and Irag fought too.  More and more Canadians I meet fought in a war in the country of origin. Even the Buddhists are killing each other over a Buddhist temple. All the criminals have guns and gang wars are raging on the streets of Canadian cities.  I grew up when cowboys fought with fists and rarely drew their guns. Now guys get curbed and the girls stab each other and slash faces.  It's not because they're watching the Discovery channel.
I wish I had my friend's faith.  I feel like Arjuna in the chariot with Krishna. Arjuna says the people who are fighting are all my family. They're my cousins fighting my cousins.  Krishna replies, there will always be war, it's just a matter of whether you will or will not be in it.  Jesus said as much about poverty.  There's a terrible realism in those lines.
I wore flowers in my hair and marched with the tens of thousands in the streets of San Francisco.  Despite all that prayer and energy, Vietnam continued.  Lennon and Yoko did a bed in and sang "Give Peace a Chance."  Lennon was shot like Kennedy, like Martin Luther King.  The good die young.  Then there was Tricky Dicky, Watergate, White Water, Hillary Clinton, the theft of the mid west pensions, the Bill's sending missiles across neutral borders as the dog wagged the tail. There was Bush and Bush and the CIA and Irag and Irag and Kundahar.  Guantanamero.
There was all that other stuff too. Like the fall of the Berlin wall. The exposure of the 50 million killed by Stalin, the Polish elite dead in mass graves, the Pol Pot and the Khymer Rouge.  I read that Bernard Shaw was an aetheist but said the events of the 20th century robbed him of his faith.  The great men of the west died in WWI, the war to end all wars.
When I was in Israel I had a vision.  I was walking in Jerusalem and before me I saw the earth sitting in the universe with a big barbed wire circling it. A sign hung from the barbed wire like the OK Corrall. The sign said, "Don't go here, they kill God."  I imagine Aliens bypassing the earth in cute space scooters. The grown ups have come to terms with their paranoia.  They're still waiting for us in quantum multiverse.
In that world my liberal friend is smiling.  I believe we'll find peace in heaven.  This election I'm so jaded I'll probably vote conservative.  I want the Canadian military to defend us from our enemies in F35's, what the liberals call the 'champagne of jets'.
I worry that too many people are smoking dope these days. It's could affect the election. The recent data says that 7% of BC drivers were stoned.
I really wish I didn't worry about the military or the economy.  I'd like to be liberal again. I'd like to believe promises that the money will go to hospitals and education. My problem is that I work in medicine and education and I've seen that the politicians promise us money but then then give $500 million to their advertising friends to make pictures of themselves.  I'd rather our military get 5 F35's than this waste of an election make work project for the liberal and NDP media friends.
Mostly I wish I was younger. I wish I was  still wearing flowers in my hair.  But then I didn't know about the Nestle corporation killing the black babies.  I hadn't even heard of Pinochet.  I didn't know Sweden women would smear Australia's Julian Assange to be the call girl of Obama's Military Industrial complex secretive America. I didn't know about Columbine. I certainly didn't imagine Goldman Sachs would take out insurance on their own junk futures, and keep the billions while 1 in 8 Americans went on food stamps.
All I'm left to believe in is the F35 and the space program.  Beam Me Up Scotty. There's no intelligent life form here.  The Dalai Lama would have died were it not for some left over WWI guns that covered his escape when the Chinese came for him with machine guns.     The Arabs can build Dubai.  In Canada all we get is another election.

I cry thinking of wearing flower in my hair.  I cry remember painting peace on the blue Volkswagon Bug.  I loved being a child.

Dad, RCAF Lancaster Bombadier

Almost every time I visit Dad he says he'd like to go to the Canadian Aviation Museum. Then he wants to see the Lancaster Bomber.  He was a bombadier in this plane but that's not what seems to keep bringing him back.  His neighbour growing up, where they shared a one room school house in Swan River, Manitoba was a fellow Bill Attlesee.  I don't even know if I have the spelling right.  Well, every time we go Dad wants to see the rear gunner position of Lancaster. He himself was midships.  "Billy went on two or three tours as a gunner....he'd sit right in there....the German planes would come right up under the plane."  I like the exhibit at the Vancouver Aviation Museum.  Dad's always sad though after we visit and then needs to rest some before he perks up again.  Something about the memories.  Nostalgia being what it is.