I wondered where everyone was ...

[iverglas]

And then I remembered. Last weekend was my holiday (yes, we still get a day off for Queen Victoria's official birthday up here in the north), this weekend is yours.

I'm not very familiar with the meaning of Memorial Day, as distinct from Remembrance Day (or the various local names for the remembrance of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month). I attended a November 11 ceremony in a small Florida town once, and was one of only a handful of people there to watch a few rather old veterans remember their comrades; one of the local people passing through the park stopped to ask whether I could explain what was going on. I attended a Memorial Day ceremony in a small city in Maine another year, and it was of course much better attended.

Anyhow, I wish you all happy barbecuing, but also, in what I imagine to be the spirit of the day, offer these.


In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields


The author, Cdn doctor John McCrae, died shortly after writing that poem in the trenches in 1915. The sentiment in the closing stanza is actually as hard to reconcile with the pointless carnage and desecration of WWI as it is with most of the wars that followed it, but as an expression of remembrance of those sent to die in those wars, regardless of their "just"ness, the poem works pretty well.


The other poem universally recited at remembrance ceremonies in Canada is:


They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

http://www.hpedsb.on.ca/sg/quinte/remembrance_day.htm
"Each Remembrance Day features the recitation of The Ode - the Ode comes from For the Fallen, a poem by the English poet and writer Laurence Binyon, which was first published in the London newspaper The Times on 21 September 1914. This verse, which became the Ode of Remembrance, has been used in association with commemoration services in Australia and much of the Commonwealth, Canada included, since 1921."

[skooooo]

1. Thanks...

..WWI had to be the most horrific experience for anyone who had to endure it in battle. Thanks for the poem.

[Paradise]

2. thanks iverglas. nice. nt

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Memorial Day

predates Remembrance Day by about 50 years. It was started just after the American Civil War by Union veterans. In the South, Memorial Day was celebrated, but not in the latter part of May. Usually, the Southern states celebrated in June. This only stopped when the Federal government passed the Monday Holiday act, making the 'official' holidays like Memorial Day uniform throughout the nation.

[dae]

4. Beautiful poem, thank you for sharing it and the link.

:)
dae

[NorthernSpy]

5. Victoria who?

And then I remembered. Last weekend was my holiday (yes, we still get a day off for Queen Victoria's official birthday up here in the north), this weekend is yours.


Well... Only some Canadians celebrate Victoria Day. In Quebec, that particular day is Patriots' Day instead. You know -- in commemoration of Quebec's great popular uprising against monarchy and colonyhood.

When are English Canadians going to ditch all that Victoria stuff and celebrate their own great heritage of armed rebellion against the Crown?


Mary

[iverglas]

7. oh dear, you missed it

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=59817&mesg_id=59888&page=

Indulgence in adolescent rebelliousness isn't our favourite pastime up here, y'know.

Not that Victoria Day could really be said to be a celebration of Victoria's contribution to the existence of the wondrous, modern state that is Canada. It's pretty much just a day off work between Easter and Canada Day. We don't get one in February when you guys have Presidents' Day, and a counterpart is indeed sorely needed in those dark days; maybe we'd have been better off if we'd signed on to that revolution thing. On the other hand, you don't get Civic Holiday (formerly, and Brit-ly, Bank Holiday) on the first weekend in August. A holiday for nothing, on a weekend when a holiday for the masses is a nice idea.

And d'ya know, I've never, to my recollection, heard of "Patriots Day" in Quebec. In point of fact, Quebec doesn't celebrate May 24th at all.

There was a rather important rebellion just after the 1867 Confederation (the pact that produced modern-day Canada). The patriots in question that time were substantially outside Quebec. Quebec has had precious little interest in or concern for the francophone minorities outside Quebec ever since, and in fact has opposed measures that would guarantee their language and cultural rights.

I've lost track of the Louis Riel statue business; the proposal to have one in Ottawa, with all the other statues of famous/important Canadians, is still just a proposal, I think. But there's a prominent one in Manitoba

http://ccge.org/ccge/english/teachingResources/rivers/tr_rivers_RRuprising.htm

Louis Riel leads the Red River Rebellion.

The British colonies of eastern North America united in 1867. They became provinces of the new country of Canada. The new country's leaders immediately prepared to take over the Hudson's Bay Company lands west of Ontario.

But when the Red River Métis learned that the government of Canada was not going to let the Métis keep their property, they organized to fight the Canadian takeover. A group of Métis met in their parish church in St. Norbert in 1869. They elected a national Métis committee, with Louis Riel as its leader.

The Métis descended from the marriages of French-speaking fur traders and First Nations women.

Riel led a band of 500 Métis militia soldiers to invade the Hudson Bay Company's Upper Fort Garry in Winnipeg. The Métis declared themselves to be a provisional government for the territory. While Riel held the fort, keeping non-Métis people prisoner there, St. Norbert's parish priest went to Ottawa to negotiate the entry of Manitoba into Confederation - with a guarantee of Métis property and language rights.

The negotiations ended with the passage of the Manitoba Act in 1870. The Manitoba Act recognized Métis rights. But, before the news could reach Manitoba, Riel ordered the execution of an unruly English-speaking prisoner from Ontario. This act would be Riel's fatal error.

Following Thomas Scott's execution, Ottawa sent soldiers to take control from Riel's militia. Public outrage in Ontario over the execution of the prisoner meant the government would not agree to the Métis request for an amnesty from prosecution. As the Canadian troops approached, Riel fled into exile in the United States.

Riel was elected to the new Canadian parliament by his Métis supporters three times. But, because he was wanted for Scott's murder, he did not return to Canada to take his seat. Without that killing, Riel might have become a respected statesmen, able to defend the rights his people had won in the Manitoba Act.

Instead, those rights were ignored. Métis claims to land were denied. The official status of their French language was revoked. The Métis declined in power and many of them moved westward in search of greater freedom and prosperity.

Riel finally returned to Canada in 1884 to take charge of another Métis uprising in Saskatchewan. This time, he was captured and hanged. His execution increased his stature as a hero for many French-speaking Canadians across the country.

In 1992, the provincial government formally recognized Louis Riel as a founding father of Manitoba. But the controversy continued over the statue raised to honour him. His supporters protested that the statue of a partially-clothed Riel was an indignity. So, in 1996, a new statue of Louis Riel, fully-clothed, was put in place.

And the question of whether Riel was a madman (there's considerable evidence to that effect) or a visionary will be debated for centuries to come ...

In any event, you will observe that 1837 preceded 1867, and reasonably imagine that the rebellions in question were part of the process that led to the negotiated creation of Canada. Had the rebellions succeeded, and republican government(s) been established in Upper and Lower Canada, there would likely be no Canada at all now, and certainly would be no French Canada, inside or outside Quebec ... and I'd most probably be living under the reign of George Bush II. Ta, but no ta. ;)

http://www.canadiana.org/citm/specifique/rebellions_e.html

[MrBenchley]

6. A couple of counterbalances....

‘GOOD-MORNING; good-morning!’ the General said  
When we met him last week on our way to the line.  
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,  
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.  
‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack     
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.  
--Siegfreid Sassoon

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in.
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
--Wilfred Owen

From my mothers sleep I fell into the State
And I hunched in its belly til my wet fur froze.
Siz miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
--Randall Jarrett

[iverglas]

8. yes, but

I considering offering my favourite bitter Eric Bogle song, too. But I thought it would be rude for moi, the outsider, to inject such commentary into the occasion. Striking a balance between principle and sensitivity, somewhere around dignity, can be difficult. Remembrance activities are fraught with pitfalls (hmm). In the case of someone else's ordinary combattants dead in atrocious wars, as of anyone else dead in circumstances that eventually call for comment, condolences to those immediately affected sometimes work best. I'd no more like to see the remembrance of the deaths of the people I'm thinking of exploited for anti-war than for imperialist purposes. In the last couple of years, unfortunately, Remembrance Day in Canada has indeed been exploited by speakers with an agenda, to rally opinion to the "war on terror", and I found that nauseating.

Binyon and McCrae had witnessed, and been as horrified by, the same atrocities as Owen wrote about. They just responded more in the tune of the times; the jingoistic, stylized patriotism of the day (King & country, in their cases) was difficult for anyone to avoid, especially when expressing what we might call solidarity these days: the business of a grateful nation recognizing the sacrifice (however pointless) and all that.

Owen, a non-combattant stretcher bearer, died about a week before Armistice Day in 1918, shot in a German machine-gun attack. My great-uncle was gassed about two weeks before that.


I remembered "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" from high school, if you can imagine. I just had a hell of a time finding it on line, since the poet's name is Jarrell. ;)

[MrBenchley]

9. Well, that IS embarassing

the more so because I actually met him once...

[iverglas]

10. well it's not like I knew

I just couldn't find the name "Randall Jarrett" anywhere on line except a couple of oddball places (I was looking for the date of the poem), and finally searched for one of the phrases and found it that way. Who'd name their kid "Randall Jarrell" anyway?

Heck, I probably couldn't even recite Flanders Field all the way through.

I'll tell you what's horrible, is the schoolchildren singing the damned thing every Remembrance Day ceremony. Soulless and stilted and shrill. And because they sing it, nobody recites/reads it the way it oughta be.

So what did Randall Jarrell, or you, have to say?