Showing posts with label Canada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canada. Show all posts
Friday, July 26, 2013
First Nations agglutinative languages
Is there First Nations people with an agglutinative language that is teaching Japanese as a foreign language?
Is there a school in Japan teaching Cree or Blackfoot ?
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Quips against racialism in poetry
But I did not use the words "boycott" or "picket" even once ! That would be what? A Sartre-complex ( the one-man boycott of the Nobel ? ) Oh — no Simone ?
Pass me that next batch-a-leaflets, will-ya ?
***
The TEXT is in a baseball glove on the wall of the East Wing of the Annex Gallery of Galley Connexion located in The Fredericton Playhouse. The phrase in qustion is in a poem:
" ... an East Indan cobbler ... "about the fate of a baseball glove - but where? In New Germany, Nova Scotia ? The author appears to be the Jordan Trethewey of www.vagabondtrust.com and winner of a STU "Robert Clayton Casto Prize in Poetry" - so a poet. I hung the gloves on the wall as a volunteer for AG and GC, but only heard the TEXT read at the vernissage - and walked out. And according to a poster you may have seen, am a member of the selection committee ... but where are the minutes of THOSE meetings ? Ah - I see, so THAT's how it works ( I'm from away, you see ... )
***
Do ex-pats from Zimbabwe still say that they are from "Southern Rhodesia" in 2013 ? Do some of them call themselves "East Indian" here in Canada ? In Toronto? In Memphis, TN ? Or are they only called that in some parts of the US and Canada by certain others with old habits ? Which of our old lexical habits is contemporary poetry bent on preserving here in NB ? Just a free-for-all of art-for-the-heck-of-it take-it-or-leave-it ? So why have editorial readers at The Fiddlehead and The Malahat Review ?
***
In 2013, which current Canadian poems or critical reviews in English refer to Gérald Godin (1938-1994) as a "French-Canadian" poet ?
***
In 2012, did Americans ask if Natasha Trethewey was "East Indian" ?
***
vagabondtrust.com reports that one of the two writers hung in the Annex Gallery is now on the board of Gallery Connexion - but is not, I believe, the author of the baseball-gloves piece on the east-side of that public gallery.
***
It is not personal.
I did not invent Canadian English usage - but I take notice.
'Halfbreed' was there before me.
But in 2013, when speaking to us of someone we do not know,
how is "East Indian" any better than "halfbreed" ?
What could that epithet's place be in "found art" in a public gallery ?
So the shoe-repair guy was no shoemaker ... what does his being one of "them" have to do with this art ?
***
a text for the Annex of Gallery Connexion in Fredericton ?
"Hell no, she's not !" he retorted - and so loud that everyone on my bus must have heard him. "Take another look. See ? She's East Indian !"
and we all know what the elision is in the above snippet, don't we ... because this is Canada and no one in Freddie thinks that Annex Gallery text's 'cobbler' was Mi'kmaq ...
***
If the "cobbler" of the text posted at Annex Gallery proves to be about someone from Trinidad, will the text change to "West Indian" ? What would "Caribbean cobbler" have conveyed that
" our cobbler (some former cricketer?) "had not ? Does it "lose" or just "drop" the issue of skin tone ? Is not the point that this leather worker was unfamiliar with baseball gloves ? That the child did not explain himself clearly ?
***
A 4-city map problem for most Canadians: Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore.
If Kolkata is in West Bengal, why was the East India Company "founding" a city there (Sam Pepys was still living ... but a company was no longer a conspiracy to evade royal taxes ?) ?
***
What is the Chandrasekhar Limit ? Is it where the railway stopped in Lahore? But if the expansive system didn't begin in Tamil Nadu in East India (excuse me, South India, east coast) ... (a tale of the largest white dwarf and ...) Dates: 1930, 1937, 1953
***
How close is Scotland to naming a Singh or a Gupta or a Park or an Ng as Scottish Makar ? Or do they deny that those who came after the Picts were immigrants ? And the Orkneys ? The Okinawa of Scotland ? Nations and national identity - so far from the vision of Stefan Zweig, Romain Rolland, the very flawed Hermann Hesse ...
***
Now ask yourself where in Western Canada I would say "Ukrainian cobbler" ... Yorkton? Canora? Kamsack? Are there still men called "Ukrainian farmer" in Saskatchewan ? Have the the descendants of the Irish and Scots in Yorkton ceased to mock those who arrived later? And in Edmonton? Winnipeg? Montreal ? Oh, you don't know where to get off the metro in a traditionally Ukrainian-Canadian ethnic neighbourhood in Montreal's Rosemont ? ( My ethnic Chinese MD in MTL was from Vietnam and our very dark-skinned pediatrician was from North Africa - not West Africa - and our "black" obstetrician was from Trinidad, not Africa.) That British mathematician whose daughter is a Canadian MD and who always remembered the birthdates of my chidren ... what could induce me to put him into a poem as an "East Indian logician" ? Whatever would I be saying - as a western Canadian from the parklands of Saskatchewan ? As a software developer with so many years with developers in and from India ? What would I be saying ? What would that MD in Fredericton conclude ? My pharmacist ? What are THEY to call ME ? Was Michael Hallett at McGill "that White British" philosopher of mathematics ? So as not to be confused with whom ? Who calls whom "East Indian" where and why in Canada ?
***
Which Canadian poet has said the Neil Devindra Bissoondath is an East Indian writer ? Does he "cobble together" his texts ? Which art exhibit currently hanging in Fredericton is "cobbled together" ? What makes a New Brunswick taxpayer who repairs shoes an "East Indian cobbler" ?
***
Fredericton Playhouse fears to censor the arts - so that Fredericton art lovers can benefit from unedited poets placing text in supposedly "Found Art" - so I ask again : what was the birthplace of the "East Indian cobbler" ? Who all is "East Indian" in Canada ? Someone from Dhaka ? Someone from Trinidad whose parents are from Dakha but were born in India? A Canadian-born Jain ? A Canadian-born Sikh ? Any member of staff or board of either Gallery Connexion or Fredericton Playhouse ? Who among the people of Fredericton fled Uganda ? Or fled Bellingham, WA ? No one in New Brunswick? Or was it that supposedly inept shoe repair person ... and when will the director of the Playhouse apologize to their spouse, children or grandchildren for this supposed work of art mocking someone who was an NB taxpayer and who are themselves NB taxpayers and whose taxes support the Canada Council Corporation ?
***
Would Fredericton PlayHouse object to the text on the wall of their Annex (Gallery Connexion) if what it said was "some immigrant" instead of "East Indian" ? What does the racialist epithet add to the text other than inviting "our" [ read, real New Brunswicker ] agreement ? Why not "some hapless cobbler" ? "that inept cobbler" ? But was he even a "cobbler" ? Did his sign say "Shoe Repair" or "Shoemaker" ?
"There stood a carpenter (see, that one has a hammer); there stood a cook ( see the spoon ? )"[From an old saw often heard in a western CDN province of immigrants as small farms failed and the rail lines were torn up to make way for Cargill trucking to crumble the roads which had run along the great social success of rural electrification ... ]
***
Is that shoe repair person who is libelled in the Annex Gallery "poem" still living in Miramichi (?) or even closer to Fredericton ? Will a member of his family come to Annex and "read" this item ? Who will explain to the "poet" that gloves are not used in cricket such as are used in American baseball and softball ? That a shoe repair person may not be a shoemaker ? That glove making was a trade ? That tack is not used for fishing, but for riding ?
***
Is Rajasthan in East India ? Is Tata an East Indian computer programming out-source company ? Uninformative epithets and why poetry matters to culture ( very old word, "culture" ... enough to make you "furrow" your brow ... ). See : Zoroastrians on the subcontinent and the wandering musicians of western Europe (into and out of India ?) See: Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA for clines and clades in human populations and human migrations. The East India Company and Amerigo Vespucci : whose Indo-what ? Proto-Indo-European language(s) and mounds of culture.
***
Last year a STU professor read a piece at Molly's one Sunday in which we heard in a tale from Regina, Saskatchewan that "a big Indian sat down beside me" - I asked her whether she had learned from him if he was Lakota or Cree or from an Albertan tribe. I say asked. It was a challenge to her. At least one friend of hers pretends not to know me now. Kind of prominent local poet. So it goes. I should have asked if that "Indian" was from south India or north India ( and if you know about THAT bias on the sub-continent ...) Oh, narrative voice ... and government grant and sabbatical funds and ... perpetrating discourse. At least it was "big" and not "drunk" or "fat" or "dumb".
"A big man sat down beside me - he may have been Cree, maybe Lakota. I didn't bother to ask ... I look Scots with my freckles anyway .. and is he going to ask about my grandfather from Danzig and the red hair?"Imagine your own variant. That is the key. Get past the frozen language of racist discourse.
***
If someone from Bangalore or Hyderabad or Chenai or Fiji or Trinidad wants to call themselves "East Indian" in Canada, so be it. The rest of us can take time to learn who people are and drop the racial epithets. The shoemaker in question may have been from Chile. If in doubt, read the travel journal of a famous Canadian writer in the South of the USA. A writer chooses some words with care. Most people in India are as Causasian as most western Europeans who call themselves French or English. For real bias, see the current Japanese attitude to genome studies. For a breath of fresh air, see the effort of Brazilian artists to use genome data to get past skin colour stereotyping in the marketing of entertainment. The Poles will one day use the genome to acknowledge the Polish citizens who as Jews passed for Lithuanians and Silesians and East Prussians and ... and now live as Catholics in Poland two and now three generations later.
***
"East Indian" is not an expression that most Canadian writers can use in good conscience. End of story. Nor "West Indian". Nor "Indian". Not unless that is who YOU say YOU are. To pretend otherwise is to live in serious denial - and a country cannot afford to fund writers who are in denial of obvious, painful, social reality - or just ignorant, of say, the Bellingham WA affair and the "East Indian" community of Vancouver. Ignorance and sloppy linguistic choices account for a good deal of strife in the world. Writers need not contribute. Liberal, democratic societies need not fund it. When we choose to promote work, we endorse that work. Or is racism an idle controversy?
***
Racism is not about flawed individuals. It is about language and social life. You don't have to be a racist to make a mistake in your choice of words. But words, published in the public forum, can be in need of retraction. In this case that poem needs some white-out until the poet can find the words that do not perpetuate a social practice - or introduce me to his family from Fiji or Trinidad or India or Pakistan or Bangladesh - and is that shoemaker still living? Where is he from? Who are his children? Was it a man? Was he gay? Was he born in Canada ? In New Brunswick?
PS Most shoe repair people are not cobblers able to make a shoe on a last - my last cobbler ( stretched my left shoe on his last in Minnesota ) was from the old country.
Schuster, bleib bei deinem Last !
***
Polite Canadian racism? What, in New Brunswick, is an "East Indian cobbler" in a poem posted in a Gallery Connexion "annex" show at the Fredericton Playhouse? Clearly "P*k-y" would not past muster - or "P*lack". Who is "East Indian" on a Canadian street? Someone from Lahore? From Dacca? From Malaysia? From Fiji? From South Africa? What is at the heart and core of polite Canadian racism? "Indian" ? From people who do not even know that our language is Indo-Germanic? That "Hindi" is not "Hindu" ? Remember the killings after 9/11 of those who "looked Arab". What committee approved Canada Council and NB Arts and City of Fredericton Funding for this? Why not "stupid Indian cobbler" ? Ah, because in NB people at least know in French what THAT means. Put that in your cobbler - before we take to the cobblestones. Or are we idle yet again? Oh - but who was that "East Indian lawyer" ... who was "East Indian" only when in South Africa or when in ... ?
Every Métis Canadian who has been called a "P_k-y" on a Canadian city street and every Métis Canadian who passes for White knows EXACTLY what I am talking about. I certainly do. If you have a a friend or neighbour or fellow passenger who looks "Indian" - ask them who they are. They may just be Torontonian. Period. Or they may be from Goa and not from Delhi. The Brazilian pop stars who do this have had some surprises in the name of ending racist musical marketing and the ignorance of human variety and the diversity of human culture.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Huckabee's Confidant Execution of Whom?
Here is a link on likely US-presidential candidate Huckabee speaking with confidence about execution as the only just remedy for the leaking of embarrassing cables: HP.
Don't forget that he is also a good Christian minister and the young man in question could easily be from a colleague's congregation. Like his pappy, Huckabee lays down the law. Now will that be by hanging or firing squad? And in time of crisis? Keep a list and Round'em Up! (worked in Canada in 1970.)
Here is a report on another bit of Huckabee: a joke?
Canada's Tom Flanagan now regrets his call to assassinate Julian Assange, or so he says. But he would have settled for "disappeared". Does he know which side of the southern continent Chile is on and which side Argentina is on? But this is not the Canada of Diefenbaker and Pearson: this is Steven Harper's Canada.
Who else called for the murder of the Australian citizen? What if General Motors had wanted to "disappear" Ralph Nader back when he was a "job-killer"? ( A Canadian hero worked with Nader, by the way ... Ken Dryden.)
What if Three Mile Island or Love Canal had been designated a "State Secret"? Would we be calling for the execution of NYT journalists, editors? Hells-bells, everyone knows the Washington Post is a hotbed of treason! Elitist treason! What America needs is a Cultural Revolution! Put those elitists to work in the cotton fields of Arkansas!
And then there is the real threat to the American way of life: atheists. Homosexual atheists. Socialist homosexual atheists. Lesbian atheistic socialists. Arm the militias! America is in imminent peril! Round up the Japs and Chinks! And most of those Polacks at Catholics like that Mafiosi, "Jack" Kennedy - who was actually born in Ireland, you know ...
And Huckabee? This Baptist minister from Hope, Arkansas came in behind McCain and Romney in 2008. Everyone thinks of him as a likable guy. Folksy charm. A real populist. Not one of the elite.
Yet Americans like to see an elite serve as the captains of aircraft carriers, as their NASA astronauts. In those cases, Americans are less likely to advocate for plain fools.
( Of course, in Canada in 1970 there were bombs, kidnappings, killings, organized domestic terrorists - and the ability to suspend civil liberties ... )
Now about organized crime in Niagara, N.Y., maybe we could just sit down an talk to those misguided entrepreneurs, right Mike? There's nothing Un-American about it - they're just responding to a commercial threat from the Canadian tourist industry. Hell, those Falls probably should have belonged to Uncle Sam in the first place ... now what would Kit Carson have done?
Don't forget that he is also a good Christian minister and the young man in question could easily be from a colleague's congregation. Like his pappy, Huckabee lays down the law. Now will that be by hanging or firing squad? And in time of crisis? Keep a list and Round'em Up! (worked in Canada in 1970.)
Here is a report on another bit of Huckabee: a joke?
Canada's Tom Flanagan now regrets his call to assassinate Julian Assange, or so he says. But he would have settled for "disappeared". Does he know which side of the southern continent Chile is on and which side Argentina is on? But this is not the Canada of Diefenbaker and Pearson: this is Steven Harper's Canada.
Who else called for the murder of the Australian citizen? What if General Motors had wanted to "disappear" Ralph Nader back when he was a "job-killer"? ( A Canadian hero worked with Nader, by the way ... Ken Dryden.)
What if Three Mile Island or Love Canal had been designated a "State Secret"? Would we be calling for the execution of NYT journalists, editors? Hells-bells, everyone knows the Washington Post is a hotbed of treason! Elitist treason! What America needs is a Cultural Revolution! Put those elitists to work in the cotton fields of Arkansas!
And then there is the real threat to the American way of life: atheists. Homosexual atheists. Socialist homosexual atheists. Lesbian atheistic socialists. Arm the militias! America is in imminent peril! Round up the Japs and Chinks! And most of those Polacks at Catholics like that Mafiosi, "Jack" Kennedy - who was actually born in Ireland, you know ...
And Huckabee? This Baptist minister from Hope, Arkansas came in behind McCain and Romney in 2008. Everyone thinks of him as a likable guy. Folksy charm. A real populist. Not one of the elite.
Yet Americans like to see an elite serve as the captains of aircraft carriers, as their NASA astronauts. In those cases, Americans are less likely to advocate for plain fools.
( Of course, in Canada in 1970 there were bombs, kidnappings, killings, organized domestic terrorists - and the ability to suspend civil liberties ... )
Now about organized crime in Niagara, N.Y., maybe we could just sit down an talk to those misguided entrepreneurs, right Mike? There's nothing Un-American about it - they're just responding to a commercial threat from the Canadian tourist industry. Hell, those Falls probably should have belonged to Uncle Sam in the first place ... now what would Kit Carson have done?
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
NetFlix Canada Indigo Howl Howitzer
The careers link at NetFlix.ca reminds me of the poetry section at the Chapters store in the Regent Mall here in Fred'town. Maybe Melville, NY is near Yorktown, NY ;-)
The single section of poetry in the retail outlet of what is now Canada's book chain had a striking resemblance to that in an American chain - the multiple copies of the collected Allen Ginsberg, the multiple volumes of Charles Bukowski ... the one diference, the one row of ( English ) Canadian poetry on the top shelf ( in a town with two universities) - and that was chiefly Leonard Cohen. I should have checked if Margaret Atwood was shelved below in speak-American having been pained to find her opening the slim "Best of 2009" high up on that top shelf.
But the day's outing ended with a more amusing moment: I saw that there are two cannons in front of the Legion just as there are two cannons in front of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery ( I kid you not ... one of the latter is a 1944 USA howitzer.) And Ginsberg?
The single section of poetry in the retail outlet of what is now Canada's book chain had a striking resemblance to that in an American chain - the multiple copies of the collected Allen Ginsberg, the multiple volumes of Charles Bukowski ... the one diference, the one row of ( English ) Canadian poetry on the top shelf ( in a town with two universities) - and that was chiefly Leonard Cohen. I should have checked if Margaret Atwood was shelved below in speak-American having been pained to find her opening the slim "Best of 2009" high up on that top shelf.
But the day's outing ended with a more amusing moment: I saw that there are two cannons in front of the Legion just as there are two cannons in front of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery ( I kid you not ... one of the latter is a 1944 USA howitzer.) And Ginsberg?
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Slaughter in War: notes viz morality of execution, desertion, mutiny and surrender
The Canadian reserve infantry regiment in which I first served (1967-1971) in NATO's reserves for rapid deployment (in the events the Soviets made a run for the Rhine - abetted by tactical nuclear artillery) had already been the regiment of generations of men who had served with great distinction and with honours in two great European wars and the Korean conflict: it is now designated a "Royal" regiment.
What is most troubling to me personally is to read that on D-Day as the remains of the Regiment's companies came up into Normandy from their losses on the beaches, they defeated their first identified German force - reported as defeated with no enemy survivors. That force was an SS boys' regiment.
Also troubling to me personally was the recent devotion to another regiment by the then Anglican Governor-General of Canada who seemed unaware that there were any questions about the conduct of her favoured infantry regiments in Korea in the matter of the interrogation of prisoners taken on intelligence-gathering sorties - although she is, herself, ethnically a Chinese Canadian.
The Canadians in the First War had often found themselves thrown in under English officers and, occasionally, some men had shown reluctance to climb out of trenches into machine-gun fire under a foreign - a British, i.e., English, officer.
Canada was not yet a nation even when I was born and was ruled at home under an act and the seal of Westminster. Even as a boy, I started school on the prairies under the Union Jack with British royalty on the classroom walls: the day began with God Save The Queen and public school prayers with a short Bible passage. We learned to draw the Union Jack in the first grades, but I do not recall learning to draw the old "Red Ensign". As a boy scout, I learned not to fly the Union Jack upside-down. As I had a maternal English grandfather (whom I did not then know, but who was born in Ireland where his father served in the English Army) and a paternal English grandmother from near Blackpool, what could seem strange?
Desertion: what remains unclear to me are the numbers. What explains that so few deserted singly or mutinied in numbers? Ignore the later Soviet example at Stalingrad and elsewhere in face of the Wehrmacht - treat it as an utter perversion of military justice in the face of national if not ethnic annihilation.
In the The Great War we had the cousin of the British King, The Kaiser, as our Canadian enemy - a Canada itself populated by a great number of ethnic Germans, as was America. Set demographics aside. Why so few desertions?
To my limited knowledge, we have a poem by Herbert Read, a monument in England and little else for the Anglo side which sheds any light on those deserters. On the German side of the Western Front, the account of Ernest Juenger was not of much help. By late in the war, the French story is somewhat nasty, but not known to me in detail (but the sequelæ of 1871 were still in living memory in Paris.)
In some cases, it may be that the manner in which Canadian reserve regiments and battalions were thrown together or torn apart for mustering reinforcements, combined with the large numbers of losses in geographically-based companies and regiments (for example, as concerns Newfoundland troops) may have prevented the spread of agitation which might have risen to the level of mutiny. The numbers of casualties may have limited disaffection reaching a tipping point or a point of catastrophic "slump". In the case of troops from the Indian subcontinent, huge losses may have been combined with utter demoralization.
What is striking is that given the number of military war dead in WWI, the number of desertions by Canadians were such a relative rarity in reports and records (some deserters or slackers may have been disposed of extra-judicially on the spot.)
On the German side, the previous war with France, in 1870-71, had served to produce a unified German force to face a diverse collection of armies. In the case of the French, the German troops fought a familiar enemy and were armed with military lore and the confidence of recent victory (and would soon return to cross the Marne - some officers serving in both great world wars with mottoes and slogans accumulated.)
If you are aware of research on the military practice of reducing the risk of mutiny by rotating frontline troops to the rear, please add a note. It would appear to be a topic in both the social psychology of men in close combat and the psychiatry of combat readiness and fitness. The common euphemisms appear to be "deadly conflict", "combat", perhaps "hand-to-hand fighting" but seldom "killing" and more seldom, "murder under military sanction" or "murder in the guise of military action".
In my experience, former combatants still in infantry service in the late 1960's used the offensive term "big Gooks" to designate taller non-Korean (Mongolian?) captives who were deliberately selected to be taken "prisoner" on scouting sorties, whereas along the Western Front, "Kraut" covered the Germans in general with the preference being to capture someone of rank or otherwise with dispatches or maps in hand.
The lore of practical warfare - for combat survival and as well as offense and defense - and particularlya s relates to intelligence gathering - as passed down among non-commissioned ranks may well differ significantly from the officers' lore of warfare as passed down in military colleges. I do recall that the injunction not to fall behind in hillside attacks (post-Korean tactics) was related to a reported risk to those commanding the attack. There seems to be a paucity of information about what may have been - in the Vietnam-era term - "fragging" folklore and legend. The accounts of torture and murder may have been bragging at its worst (but passed on by those who had chosen to stay in military service for almost twenty years at that time.)
I believe that deserters are usually lumped with cowards and/or traitors, unlike objectors who were subjected to some term of prison or service. Whether a soldier under conscription serving in a foreign war can be considered a traitor to his or her nation would seem less that obvious. Is mutiny not resulting in murder and strategic loss judged as would be catastrophic mutiny in time of war e.g., not the bridge-too-far, not the strategic bridgehead? Similar considerations would seem to apply to surrender: what are the terms and circumstances under which soldiers serving in, say, a United Nations force in a foreign conflict, may surrender in good conscience and yet be accounted an honourable discharge when hostilities cease?
Actively seeking to promote desertion is now a strategy in Afghanistan while media such as BBC and CNN report that "foreign fighters" are those least likely to surrender. The Soviet authorities in the Great Patriotic War conflated desertion with treason, with capture, with serving the enemy, with illegal or unauthorized surrender. Summary execution and mass executions of Soviet troops by Soviet authorities are well documented. We are now presented with desertion, not surrender, as a political option which we favor and seek to promote through dialog with the Taliban and others at all levels. It may be only a tactic, but it is now publicly avowed as key to our strategy to end armed conflict.
The conditions under which troops not defending civilians or critical war resources may be permitted to even discuss surrender is not clear to me: cases in point may be those deployed too far in advance (error) or those disabled by so-called "friendly fire". Cases of Canadians who fell victim to American fire in WWII are documented, but I am unaware of directives from senior officers on how to handle the redeployment or subsequent deployment of these stricken forces with specific regard to morale.
If you are aware of resources readily available in English, French or German, please add a note.
Canadians prior to deployment in the Horn of Africa seemed immunized by journalistic tradition against any knowledge of Canadian wartime atrocities - whereas there was some awareness of the need for Canadian Forces to be perceived as under Canadian command (among many other issues as relate, e.g., to French-Canadian regiments from Quebec.)
Note: my extended Canadian family includes a current army General and a former regimental sergeant-major (served in Korea under-age) both descended from a 19th Century Métis scout and translator for British English Canadian forces sometimes referred to as a traitor to the Métis cause in the Riel Rebellion and as having committed a battlefield murder in the killing of Isidore Dumont (that rebellion divided the Métis along ethnic lines: Scots and French although I find that blame for that ethnic cleavage is not commonly laid on the heros, Riel and Dumont.) My wife's grandfather served in the trenches and his son survived ditching in the sea in WWII. I do not think of myself as an unconditional pacifist, but rather a liberal anti-militarist in matters of command and hierarchy in research (historical, technical or scientific), business, labour, party politics, community administration and organized religion - but neither a libertarian nor an anarchist - with an enduring interest in the inter-relations of the abuse of language with the abuse of power.
What is most troubling to me personally is to read that on D-Day as the remains of the Regiment's companies came up into Normandy from their losses on the beaches, they defeated their first identified German force - reported as defeated with no enemy survivors. That force was an SS boys' regiment.
Also troubling to me personally was the recent devotion to another regiment by the then Anglican Governor-General of Canada who seemed unaware that there were any questions about the conduct of her favoured infantry regiments in Korea in the matter of the interrogation of prisoners taken on intelligence-gathering sorties - although she is, herself, ethnically a Chinese Canadian.
The Canadians in the First War had often found themselves thrown in under English officers and, occasionally, some men had shown reluctance to climb out of trenches into machine-gun fire under a foreign - a British, i.e., English, officer.
Canada was not yet a nation even when I was born and was ruled at home under an act and the seal of Westminster. Even as a boy, I started school on the prairies under the Union Jack with British royalty on the classroom walls: the day began with God Save The Queen and public school prayers with a short Bible passage. We learned to draw the Union Jack in the first grades, but I do not recall learning to draw the old "Red Ensign". As a boy scout, I learned not to fly the Union Jack upside-down. As I had a maternal English grandfather (whom I did not then know, but who was born in Ireland where his father served in the English Army) and a paternal English grandmother from near Blackpool, what could seem strange?
Desertion: what remains unclear to me are the numbers. What explains that so few deserted singly or mutinied in numbers? Ignore the later Soviet example at Stalingrad and elsewhere in face of the Wehrmacht - treat it as an utter perversion of military justice in the face of national if not ethnic annihilation.
In the The Great War we had the cousin of the British King, The Kaiser, as our Canadian enemy - a Canada itself populated by a great number of ethnic Germans, as was America. Set demographics aside. Why so few desertions?
To my limited knowledge, we have a poem by Herbert Read, a monument in England and little else for the Anglo side which sheds any light on those deserters. On the German side of the Western Front, the account of Ernest Juenger was not of much help. By late in the war, the French story is somewhat nasty, but not known to me in detail (but the sequelæ of 1871 were still in living memory in Paris.)
In some cases, it may be that the manner in which Canadian reserve regiments and battalions were thrown together or torn apart for mustering reinforcements, combined with the large numbers of losses in geographically-based companies and regiments (for example, as concerns Newfoundland troops) may have prevented the spread of agitation which might have risen to the level of mutiny. The numbers of casualties may have limited disaffection reaching a tipping point or a point of catastrophic "slump". In the case of troops from the Indian subcontinent, huge losses may have been combined with utter demoralization.
What is striking is that given the number of military war dead in WWI, the number of desertions by Canadians were such a relative rarity in reports and records (some deserters or slackers may have been disposed of extra-judicially on the spot.)
On the German side, the previous war with France, in 1870-71, had served to produce a unified German force to face a diverse collection of armies. In the case of the French, the German troops fought a familiar enemy and were armed with military lore and the confidence of recent victory (and would soon return to cross the Marne - some officers serving in both great world wars with mottoes and slogans accumulated.)
If you are aware of research on the military practice of reducing the risk of mutiny by rotating frontline troops to the rear, please add a note. It would appear to be a topic in both the social psychology of men in close combat and the psychiatry of combat readiness and fitness. The common euphemisms appear to be "deadly conflict", "combat", perhaps "hand-to-hand fighting" but seldom "killing" and more seldom, "murder under military sanction" or "murder in the guise of military action".
In my experience, former combatants still in infantry service in the late 1960's used the offensive term "big Gooks" to designate taller non-Korean (Mongolian?) captives who were deliberately selected to be taken "prisoner" on scouting sorties, whereas along the Western Front, "Kraut" covered the Germans in general with the preference being to capture someone of rank or otherwise with dispatches or maps in hand.
The lore of practical warfare - for combat survival and as well as offense and defense - and particularlya s relates to intelligence gathering - as passed down among non-commissioned ranks may well differ significantly from the officers' lore of warfare as passed down in military colleges. I do recall that the injunction not to fall behind in hillside attacks (post-Korean tactics) was related to a reported risk to those commanding the attack. There seems to be a paucity of information about what may have been - in the Vietnam-era term - "fragging" folklore and legend. The accounts of torture and murder may have been bragging at its worst (but passed on by those who had chosen to stay in military service for almost twenty years at that time.)
I believe that deserters are usually lumped with cowards and/or traitors, unlike objectors who were subjected to some term of prison or service. Whether a soldier under conscription serving in a foreign war can be considered a traitor to his or her nation would seem less that obvious. Is mutiny not resulting in murder and strategic loss judged as would be catastrophic mutiny in time of war e.g., not the bridge-too-far, not the strategic bridgehead? Similar considerations would seem to apply to surrender: what are the terms and circumstances under which soldiers serving in, say, a United Nations force in a foreign conflict, may surrender in good conscience and yet be accounted an honourable discharge when hostilities cease?
Actively seeking to promote desertion is now a strategy in Afghanistan while media such as BBC and CNN report that "foreign fighters" are those least likely to surrender. The Soviet authorities in the Great Patriotic War conflated desertion with treason, with capture, with serving the enemy, with illegal or unauthorized surrender. Summary execution and mass executions of Soviet troops by Soviet authorities are well documented. We are now presented with desertion, not surrender, as a political option which we favor and seek to promote through dialog with the Taliban and others at all levels. It may be only a tactic, but it is now publicly avowed as key to our strategy to end armed conflict.
The conditions under which troops not defending civilians or critical war resources may be permitted to even discuss surrender is not clear to me: cases in point may be those deployed too far in advance (error) or those disabled by so-called "friendly fire". Cases of Canadians who fell victim to American fire in WWII are documented, but I am unaware of directives from senior officers on how to handle the redeployment or subsequent deployment of these stricken forces with specific regard to morale.
If you are aware of resources readily available in English, French or German, please add a note.
Canadians prior to deployment in the Horn of Africa seemed immunized by journalistic tradition against any knowledge of Canadian wartime atrocities - whereas there was some awareness of the need for Canadian Forces to be perceived as under Canadian command (among many other issues as relate, e.g., to French-Canadian regiments from Quebec.)
Note: my extended Canadian family includes a current army General and a former regimental sergeant-major (served in Korea under-age) both descended from a 19th Century Métis scout and translator for British English Canadian forces sometimes referred to as a traitor to the Métis cause in the Riel Rebellion and as having committed a battlefield murder in the killing of Isidore Dumont (that rebellion divided the Métis along ethnic lines: Scots and French although I find that blame for that ethnic cleavage is not commonly laid on the heros, Riel and Dumont.) My wife's grandfather served in the trenches and his son survived ditching in the sea in WWII. I do not think of myself as an unconditional pacifist, but rather a liberal anti-militarist in matters of command and hierarchy in research (historical, technical or scientific), business, labour, party politics, community administration and organized religion - but neither a libertarian nor an anarchist - with an enduring interest in the inter-relations of the abuse of language with the abuse of power.
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