I was pleasantly surprised when I asked my oldest son today if he knew what D-Day was about. He knew about Juno and that Canadian soldiers were feared by the Germans for their superior fighting skills. I told him how impressed I was that they had studied it in school. He quickly corrected my misconception, it was the internet he had gotten his information from, not the school. He has been busy studying globalization in school, not history. On his own, he has researched our military history. Good for him! Shame on our schools. History is important and getting the perspective of people from 65 years ago is very interesting. Here is a radio report from way back in time.
A very quick summary of Canada at war will give you an idea of the valour of our troops.
The Canadians had to fight every step of the way to Caen and Carpiquet airfield. At one point they faced the elite 12 S.S. panzer division manned by young German fanatics commanded by experienced officers and non commissioned troops. But the Canadians Triumphed and on July 10th, Caen was liberated by Canadian and British forces.
They are not teaching this in school, even when I was in school years ago, our proud history as a fighting nation was not taught, luckily I enjoyed reading and a book (can't remember which one now) about the Battle of The Bulge and the Diary of Anne Frank, woke me up to the fact that socialism was a threat to freedom.
Much as I dislike CTV, today they provided really good coverage of the D-day ceremonies. I suspect that they were forced to because they wanted to cover Obama, and it just happened that PM Harper was there as well. Go and listen to both PM Harpers speech and President Obamas speech (On the right side you can select the videos).
Both speeches were very good, I noticed that PM Harper actually spoke from his heart. You know that he genuinely supports our troops and understands that we must stand strong as a nation against any terrorist threats.
President Obama, a noted orator, was speaking the words, but his delivery was flat. He read the speech that someone else wrote but there was no passion, no conviction, no fire.
I want to thank our veterans for keeping Canada safe. What an incredible job our troops do. Maybe Canada has never suffered from a terrorist attack because they know we are warriors at heart, and that we will never back down from a fight we believe in. That is why I get so upset about the NDP and the Bloc, they weaken our country by their sickening passivity. The Liberals only support something they think will gain them votes, that might be even worse than being pacifists.
To our troops from yesterday and those fighting today....THANK YOU.
