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 'so 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
its 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.

Cheers
Marty