Stephen Harper's Spring election call is likely given a filled war chest, Liberal readiness and the NDP low in the polls. Let the attack ads roll.

Will we all be counting on the Prime Minister for a Spring election?

The 2015 Canadian Federal General Election. 

Stephen Harper has lots of reasons to call a Spring general election rather than wait until Fall.

by Tom Thorne

I have been ruminating about the upcoming 2015 General Election that according to the legislation passed by the Harper Government must be held this year. The more I think about it, the prospect of the election coming in the Fall is less likely due to circumstances that could hurt Conservatives if they wait too long.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a wily politician. He has experienced more changes than a chameleon during his political career. His party loyalties and affiliations have been varied. In the 1980’s he was a Liberal a fact that he would rather not let people know about after he went hard right on the political spectrum. 

His early conversion to the right was as a member of the Reform Party working first for MP Deborah Grey in the 1980’s. Eventually  after going head to head with Reform’s leader Preston Manning he left politics. That took him out of parliament for a period in the 1990’s when he headed the National Citizen’s Coalition (NCC) as its President. There he found his true right wing home.

Stephen Harper quit the NCC to become the leader of The Canadian Alliance winning a by election in 2002 that made him Leader of the Opposition. By 2004 he had resigned from the Canadian Alliance and ran for the leadership of The Conservative Party of Canada. This act merged the right orientation of the Alliance with the more centre right Conservatives. Effectively the Harper version of the Conservative Party shifted more right with Harper as their choice of leader. 

As Leader of the Conservatives he returned to parliament as the Leader of the Opposition in 2004. The general election of that year returned the first Harper Conservative Government with a minority that required the combined efforts of the Bloc Quebecois (BQ) and the New Democratic Party (NDP) to keep it in power.

In 2008 Harper’s Conservatives were awarded another minority government which lasted until 2011 when another election finally gave the Conservatives a majority with 38 percent of the votes. The Liberal Party faded as a potent force in Canadian political life and the NDP swept Quebec to become the Official Opposition under Thomas Mulcair.

Now the stage is set for the 2015 General Election. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has recently seen prominent conservatives leave his caucus. John Baird, after a credible stint as Foreign Minister is going he says at age 45 into the private sector. My view of this is Baird wants to be out of the fray this time so he can return as a leadership candidate once the Harper era is over.

Then there is Jason Kenny who shares Stephen Harper’s right wing sentiments. Kenny is a rival for Harper’s job and he also is waiting for Stephen Harper to withdraw from politics. Kenny is the most independent of the Harper cabinet bright and tough enough to deflect too much Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) interference in ministries he has headed.  Jason Kenny is the one to watch as the country goes through the next election.

Of course there are other rivals for the Prime Minister’s job but first of all we have to examine reasons why his job will be open. Stephen Harper will remain Prime Minister for at least one more election. How long he stays after that election depends on how well the Conservatives do.  A majority would give him another full term. A minority government ensures that he will leave politics sooner. He will also have had the job for over 10 years by that time.

Other problems are on the horizon for Stephen Harper. First is the upcoming Senator Mike Duffy trial  that is due to start in the Spring. This means that the turgid mess concerning how Duffy received payments of $90,000 from  PMO chief Nigel Wright to repay his mistakes about where his primary residence is actually located. No one has been completely able to nail down what Prime Minister Harper really knew about this payment. That will emerge during the trial under oath. Certainly it was not only Nigel Wright who knew other PMO staffers were clearly in the know. 

If the Prime Minister’s shown that his Question Period answers to Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair’s grillings were misleading or even fibs about the $90,000 payment then he could end up being accused of lying to Parliament. If this happens before a Fall election it could be very damaging and provide a lot of fodder for the Opposition parties to use on the election hustings.

Nigel Wright was not charged by the RCMP concerning his personal $90,000 payment to Mike Duffy. That suggests that Wright may be a key witness for the trial.  It may not be illegal to offer to pay someone’s debt, but when you are also the head of the PMO it smells badly and suggests that the PMO and the Prime Minister just wanted Duffy to go away. The trial should get to the bottom of this embarrassing event. 

Also it is time to examine how well the Prime Minister chooses people. His batting record with appointing senators like Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin and appointing Nigel Wright suggest poor skills at first choosing people but more his subsequent managing of them. His personnel skills are in some doubt.

Another faux pas is the Dimitri Soudas firing. Soudas was at one point head of the Conservative Party apparatus as its director and later a key communications advisor in the PMO. His help to then girl friend Conservative MP Eve Adams to get a nomination caused Prime Minister Harper to fire him. Recently Eve Adams was told by the PM that she could not run again as a Conservative candidate in 2015. The result: she bolted to the Liberal Party where she was welcomed by Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. 

No one really knows how Eve Adams, now engaged to Dimitri Soudas, links to the Liberal Party as an intelligence source, as Eve Adams prepares a bid to run against Conservative Finance Minister Joe Oliver in his riding. Of course a wily Justin Trudeau is making Eve contest the riding against other potential Liberal candidates. If she loses the nomination, then his Eve Adams association ends.

My point is there is something lacking in Stephen Harper’s choice of people to work for his government. He always seems to have problems reigning in people he chooses. Loyal first rate Conservative operatives like Nigel Wright , Dimitri Soudas, John Baird seem to self destruct under his micro management. His choice of senate appointees Duffy and Wallin first screw up and then turn against the Prime Minister. And when someone gets in trouble in his government (actually the PM) they become instantly persona non grata.

Lastly there is the balanced books conundrum. Finance Minister Joe Oliver still says it’s possible even with low world oil pricing battering the Canadian economy. Even if it isn’t possible it will be possible for the upcoming election and that election will be sooner than later so that is possible. It is, after all, the Prime Minister’s wish that the budget be balanced.

Yes, the 2015 federal general election will very likely be in the Spring. Strategically that makes sense since the Opposition will be not fully prepared, polls for some life for Conservatives exist in Quebec, and the federal budget now slated for April will come down loaded with goodies and an upbeat message about how Conservatives always steer the ship well through turbulent times. 

© Copyright 2015, Tom Thorne, All Rights Reserved.

Jihadist thoughts explored: The True Believer.

Suicide bombers believe that Allah rewards them in heaven. 

The thoughts of an ISIS Jihadist.

ISIS: Understanding the new fascist threat to Iraq and Syria and how this plays out in an Information Age.

ISIS: All the marks of a fascist regime are present in this organization.

ISIS and radicalized Canadian youth. North American and European youth succumb to a new fascism.

by Tom Thorne

At the time of writing Canadian youth are in Iraq and Syria fighting for ISIS. Estimates by the Canadian Government say they number about 130, but these are only the people authorities in Ottawa seem to know about. Canada is not alone. Young Americans and Europeans are also in Iraq and Syria fighting for ISIS. 

Canadians fighting abroad for ISIS are often born Muslims, but now we are seeing converts to Islam who are not from a Muslim background joining these jihadist groups. The Canadian Muslim community is on record denying these people. Several radicalized non-Muslim people have been turned away from mosques once their jihadist notions were revealed.

The youth who engage jihadism are in a state of anomie with Canada and also mainstream Muslims who practice the peaceful tenets of Islam. They may say they are now Muslim but they are a far cry away from it really means to be a Muslim and practice peace, stability and a productive life contributing to Canadian society.  

They also reject their own Canadian backgrounds and yearn to become contributors to the defeat of western countries including Canada involved in the middle east conflicts. They see the West as some Great Satan. They claim that the West is corrupt and without a moral compass on the world stage. 

Radicalization for those without a Muslim background is a two step process. First they have to convert. Second you have to reject the real peaceful and respectful tenets of Islam for the perverted notions expressed in Islam’s name by ISIS or the Taliban in Afghanistan. Finally they must ultimately endorse terror as a means to achieve their ends. This decision puts them at odds with Canada and it is especially drastic when they burn their Canadian passports in ISIS propaganda videos on the World Wide Web.

This means that what goes on in their heads is at least a 180 degree turn from what they know. A Canadian radicalized in this way has to surrender any ideas about democracy and replace it with totalitarian doctrines that are fascist in their origins. Fascism is basically a thought system where views are fixed and the response to any other view is a rigid one way response. Other views are infidels and therefore subject to abuse and even death.

If these young people have any religious or social ideas from the West once radicalized they reject all they know, not for Islamic values but for jihadist ideas that use Islam badly to perpetuate their deeds of violence and social mayhem. Real Islamic values have no conflict with Canadian values.

These converts to jihadism decide to fight for a dark side which to them is a justified fight, believing that it is the right and only way to correct the world’s ills. You have become a true believer keyed to violence, war and human dislocation. If you adopt ISIS you are capable of helping to create thousands of refugees in the Middle East and a terror in Iraq, Syria, and also Canada and elsewhere in the West if the opportunity arises.

In order to better understand this phenomenon I reflect back on the Flemish, Dutch and French youth who after 1940 willingly joined the Waffen SS to aid their German conquerors. These units saw service on the Russian Front fighting for a racist regime locked in by Nazi anti Bolshevism propaganda and the destruction of the Communist Soviet State. Nazi distortions enabled them to summarily kill and murder wherever their armies went in Eastern Europe. There is a parallel to ISIS today.

This propaganda was simultaneously bound up with expanding Germany’s influence and frontiers into Eastern Europe for living space with the idea of enslaving a slavic race of humans. If you had a slavic background you had no human rights.  Anyone in areas under ISIS control who cannot prove they are Muslim can summarily end up as a refugee or dead.

Young Europeans from conquered countries were seen by their Nazi masters as racially pure Ayrans who could be committed with Germans to set up a Nordic state with slavs as subjugated inferior peoples. They fought as these young Canadians do for ISIS an enemy of their own people, history and ideals of democracy. They were radically turned.

How does this anomie develop? How do young people make such as decision? In World War 2 none of the Flemings, Dutch or French young men who joined the Waffen SS were drafted or coerced. They all volunteered or fell for the SS and Nazi propaganda that surrounded them. The SS State within a state created glorious Ayran myths to justify the most heinous crimes on the Russian front and a glowing elite system to attract recruits to be their new SS supermen. In many ways ISIS recruitment in the West is the same.

When the propaganda says you are superior or always right it is an attractive lure that contributes to casting off your old values and simultaneously suspending critical thinking. Your own culture becomes unattractive and bankrupt. Recruits see themselves as winners where before they were losers or victims. These young people may be leaving behind student debts, and an economy that tolerates 25 percent youth unemployment or underemployment. Many of them have higher educations and also skills very useful in the Information Age to ISIS.

This World War 2 Waffen SS example sounds all very familiar when young Europeans saw almost 10 years of the Depression before 1939. Their experience was not the same as Canadian youth in that time who could join the Canadian military after war was declared on Germany and contribute to a Nazi defeat. Many of the young men who went to war in Canada had also undergone or were brought up through ten lost years of economic depression.

In Europe the youth could only cooperate with the Nazi conquers if they were to have any kind of life in the Nazi New Order or at least that’s what they thought.  Resistance seemed futile because the Nazis were so confident and strong by 1940.

We see the atrocities and beheadings of ISIS as they try to cut a Calif out of Iraq and Syria. In order to do the wicked things that ISIS does you must always be right and without doubt of any kind. The Nazis had a similar mentality.

You have to be morally numb to kill civilians who cannot prove they are Muslims or create refugees on a huge scale to build your new state on tension and anxiety.  ISIS adherents  must suspend their moral compass to build a state capable of withstanding the influences of the West and its leader, The United States, their Great Satan upon which they can pile all their angst and vitriol.

That is the anomie displayed by North Americans and Europeans who join ISIS. This force can justify any excess as it makes its point. It is kind of logical madness where might is always right and any other view is sufficient reason to kill. Adherents can behead journalists on TV and film their filling of mass graves with victims.

Compassion is suspended and brains are turned off. However when this kind of mentality is disciplined it can be a formidable force to stop. The SS was exactly like this in World War 2 as our troops found out in the 1943 Italian Campaign and after D-Day in Normandy.

The focus is on being superior in all things, being so radical that moral judgement is suspended indefinitely. It is unleashed disciplined terror with no appeal to any reason or justice. It is the new fascism and it requires the same answer we gave to the Nazis 75 years ago.

There is one problem however. The moral compass of the West is not clean or without blemish. This week a report was released that has the potential to fuel ISIS recruitment and can be used to justify the current ISIS activities. In short the propaganda war can now easily turn on the West and particularly the United States. 

It seems that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) clearly used torture of the most heinous kind to extract information from alleged terror suspects after 9/11. The order to do this ultimately came from President George W. Bush and others in his administration. This damning report tells that no really useful information was obtained from these torture sessions and how the information was obtained through torture was sanitized for White House decision making.

Now we face a propaganda war on top of the hot war going on in Iraq and Syria. ISIS is a fascist organization and it feeds off propaganda such as using our turned young people to denounce their own Western values. Now the CIA will be shown as an arm of the Great Satan and ISIS will justify their harsh regime with that as a backdrop.

Bombing ISIS armies is only one step to destroying this force. Fighting them on the ground through second parties will also have no real effect because they are well motivated, ruthless true believers and without any normal standards of restraint. 

© Copyright 2014, Tom Thorne, All Rights Reserved

Get ready for a Harper Government propaganda binge as we move towards the 2015 General Election.

The road to the 2015 Federal General Election is paved with unanswered political questions for the Harper Government.

by Tom Thorne

These days I keep saying Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s current media and the potential for positive voter responses are pretty good for a PM coming to the end of a mandate. His media relations are quite well managed at least on the international stage.

He’s had good press in China and at the G20 Summit held in Brisbane. He looks like a leader with moxy when he tells Vladimir Putin to get out of the Ukraine. Usually by this time a Prime Minister (PM) has worn out his welcome after almost five years in office. He also he won the by-elections last week in Oshawa and Yellowhead.

Fortunately for Stephen Harper the media and the public appear to have short memories about the PM’s recent experiences. It seems that the scandal pots are currently off boil but some big items now in limbo are coming up to the front of the stove.

The first one is the upcoming Spring 2015 trial of Mike Duffy. You remember him, the Senator who managed to get a $90,000 personal gift from Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Chief of Staff, Nigel Wright.  Mr. Wright just personally decided to give Mr. Duffy the money he needed to pay back his allegedly improperly booked Senate of Canada expenses. Of course it was 100 percent a Nigel Wright decision as we know.

Whether Nigel Wright resigned or was fired by the PM after this mis-step no one is quite sure. Mr. Wright’s actions seem out of character given his heavy weight credentials in the business world before taking over the PMO. He remains unscathed at this time by charges from the RCMP investigation into this sorry affair. However he will likely be called as a witness for the Mike Duffy trial.

Who knew about all of this in the PMO still remains an open point. The PMO was  porous enough with many staffers knowing about the Mike Duffy deal as they implemented it for Nigel Wright. However, despite a widespread knowledge of the deal, the PM himself managed to stay out of the fray with an almost angelic yet strangely obscure innocence. The Duffy affair orbited the PMO and the PM for several months so was he in the know about the deal’s final cut? He lied to Parliament if the answer is yes.

The PM’s evasive and obscure answers about Duffy and Wright during Question Period still resound as an enigma wrapped inside a conundrum. Mr. Harper was probed whenever he was in the House of Commons with uncommonly hard  precision by New Democratic Leader Tom Mulcair.  He weathered Mr. Mulcair’s inquisition, but not without doubts being raised about his knowledge of the Duffy-Wright events. Those doubts remain although softened by the wiles of time.

Mike Duffy’s trial may very well open up these old questions. Answers under oath could bring the PM’s obscurities into a clearer light. The PM and PMO staffers who know the details could  summoned to appear on Mr. Duffy’s witness lists and perhaps one of them could even be the PM himself. This is one of the reasons why the election will be in the early Spring before the Mike Duffy debacle begins in earnest.

The Americans are still mulling over the Canadian built pipeline that will bring Alberta crude to refineries on the US Gulf Coast. The Republican House of Representatives and the outgoing Senate voted for the pipeline and lost by one vote for the necessary 60 percent to carry it several days ago.  

President Barack Obama may have exercised his veto had their legislation passed.  It is not over. The new Republican held Congress will likely go at it again. This situation still contains a lot of concern in Ottawa and Alberta until those elected in the US midterm elections take their seats and they try the pipeline vote again. Of course the decision about what President Barack Obama will finally do is up in the air.

Alberta can only see more difficulties to ship their crude oil in the medium term. It will mean, of course, that more crude will be shipped by railway tanker across Canada through to Eastern Canada.  The idea of a pipeline to the Pacific coast can only resurface during the  2015 election with a lot of opposition from British Columbia, native bands and communities where the pipeline runs.

A US presidential veto on this file or any procedural Congressional hold up is a lose for the Harper Government here in Canada. Also the price of crude oil is low at the moment and so Alberta and Ottawa revenues are down with a need to show a surplus for the 2015 federal general election this adds stress.  And so it is with resource-based economies.

The Conservative strength in Alberta is losing opportunity if their oil cannot get to market. On the other side until other Canadian pipelines are constructed or upgraded moving Alberta crude will remain the task of using more risky railway cars. It will be hard to defend this situation with memories of  the Lac Mégantic fire and 47 dead in the election equation.

Handing out election year goodies like the recent income tax sharing scheme will be harder to fund unless other departments are cut back.  This is not a good situation during an election year when the Harper Government is determined to hand out goodies and balance the annual federal government budget while doing so. 

The late Jim Flaherty, Mr. Harper’s former finance minister before he died recently, opposed this income tax sharing plan. Obviously Mr. Harper thinks its a good idea. Cutting or lowering taxes always makes a right wing government look as if it hasn’t strayed too far off the less government in your life path.

The Harper Government has also been waffling on green house gases and climate change since 2008 and again in 2011. With the US and China recently signing an  agreement on this file it means that Canada now must to get into step. 

The Harper Government’s lack of action on this file has been linked to the argument that while the US does little or nothing to stem green house gases there is no way Canadians can make a difference. That is about to change and it is a vulnerable spot on the 2015 campaign trail for the Conservatives. 

Generally this government is the most secretive in recent memory. Ministers of the Crown are sparingly available to the media or the public to explain themselves because the PMO sees the media as an enemy to be diligently managed like bad children. 

The PMO considers it can only master political events by issuing as little information as possible and controlling the Conservative caucus and what they say and do. There is really only one voice for this government and that voice emanates from the Prime Minister and his office.

They usually use Friday afternoons to launch policies and then take no questions after the announcement so the whole idea can lull through a weekend. They continually deal with unpleasantries that could embarrass the government without any clarity or shame. They answer questions in the House of Commons with contempt for the institution. 

Earlier this year Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s parliamentary secretary Paul Calandra went too far by answering a question from Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair with an response that had nothing to do with the original question. 

After an irritated exchange through the Speaker from Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair, Mr. Calandra apologized the following week in tears to the House of Commons for his behaviour after thinking it all through during the weekend. It was one of the only acts of contrition by this government influenced Mr Calandra said by his father’s standards which he had forgot in the rough and tumble of adversarial Ottawa politics.

Paul Calandra is a master of obscurity and when he often represented the government and the PM on CBC’s Power and Politics program he would shamelessly skate around issues and obscure them continually. The Harper Government has not learned that by trying to control their message to the extent they do, it is ultimately counter-productive to their credibility. It is hard to think of this government as being forthright, open and candid. And  please notice they are never, ever wrong.

The Government’s Economic Action Plan media advertising keeps reminding us that the Harper Government is a great fiscal manager of public funds spending wisely to create jobs yet youth unemployment remains stubbornly high despite their promotions. 

The truth the Harper Government has been running a deficit and spending since their re-election in 2011. To balance the books and have a $1.5 billion surplus for the election means that funds are being reallocated or cutbacks made through the ministries to make the Harper Government appear to be great fiscal managers for the 2015 general election.

Watch now for an intense media advertising barrage by the Harper Government, all done at public expense rather than Conservative Party expense as we go into 2015. This government will use every means to get its propaganda out masquerading their political message as federal government services advertising. That is one of the prerogatives of the party in power but remember who pays for it all.  

Finally the record of this government with our veterans is appalling. Services and help are withheld in many cases or veterans are put through insensitive rounds of bureaucracy when they apply for benefits, or fight funding cuts and the lack of help. Veteran’s service offices are cut back and yet the stops are pulled out for Remembrance Day. There is a distaff between the reality and the action on this file that resonates very loud.

© 2014, Tom Thorne, All Rights Reserved  

© 2014, Tom Thorne, Harper Cartoon, All Rights Reserved

Harper Government may have tight race in the Oshawa-Whitby by-election today.

Federal by-elections in Ontario and Alberta today.

by Tom Thorne

Perhaps we will have a test of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s popularity today in the Oshawa-Whitby by-election. Two by-elections are being contested. One in Ontario and one in Alberta. The fist one is to replace Harper’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty who died suddenly. This riding is Oshawa-Whitby.

Pat Perkins is the Conservative candidate this time. Celina Caesar-Chavennes is carrying the Liberal banner and Trish McAuliffe is attempting her second run at the riding for the New Democratic Party (NDP). McAuliffe came second in 2011 running against Jim Flaherty so this time the outcome could be close for all three candidates especially because the Conservative candidate is new to the party.

Probably the vote will be split almost evenly for a tight night of counting in Oshawa-Whitby. There are three other candidates in this race who may siphon off piddling numbers of votes but really it looks very even and hence a tight race in Oshawa-Whitby.

Rob Merrifield resigned the Federal Parliament as the member from Yellowhead Alberta to take up an envoy job in Washington for the Alberta Government. Mr Merrifield is a Conservative, and in 2011 received 77 percent of the vote so this looks like a safe riding for the Harper Government.

In 2011 the NDP did better than the Liberals getting 13 percent. A Green Party candidate got 5.1 percent and the Liberals almost as scarce as hen’s teeth in this region, garnered  only 2.8 percent of the vote.

It’s electoral  history seems to indicate a Conservative win. Before the Conservative and Reform parties merged the riding was held by the conservative former Prime Minister Joe Clark from 1979-1993 with about 44 percent of the vote. In one election Joe Clark went head to head with Reform’s leader Preston Manning. 

Manning got 27 percent. When you combine those votes into a single Conservative Party which is the case today, Conservatives get 71 percent well on the way to Rob Merrifield's 77 percent win in 2011. Yellowhead will remain Conservative.

The Yellowhead candidates are Jim Eglinski who is a retired RCMP officer, former Mayor of Fort St. John. He is favoured to win against teacher Ryan Mahusn for the Liberals and Eric Rosendahl for the NDP.

In Alberta by-elections are never protest elections. So I don’t expect a change of party there. However, in Ontario the protest levels against the Harper Government could be reflected in the outcome of a tight race in Oshawa-Whitby.

On the media relations front, Prime Minster Stephen Harper has been doing quite well. In Brisbane at the G20 meeting after he publicly told President Vladimir Putin to get out of The Ukraine. That plays well at home.  He helped to get President Putin shunned at this important meeting. Putin left early.

A week earlier in China he brought up the case of Canadians under house arrest. And he flew home from China for Remembrance Day in Ottawa and then flew out for Australia and the Brisbane G20 Summit. He sure looks like a doer and a man in action which may help today in the by-elections. You can sense the impending 2015 General Election in Prime Minister's every move these days.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and Liberal Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne have been actively campaigning in Oshawa-Whitby. These two popular Liberals may have made a difference. Polls close a 9 P.M. local time so by 11:30 PM we should know the results for both contested ridings.

© Copyright 2014, Tom Thorne, All Rights Reserved.

Remembering well on Remembrance Day is getting harder as veterans of World War 1 are all gone and those of World War 2 become fewer.

War Memorial Ottawa 

Remembrance Day 2014 

We are now 100 years out from the start of World War 1 and 75 years out from the start of World War 2.  There are no Canadian veterans left from World War 1. There are fewer veterans left from World War 2.  Even more sobering is the fact that the ranks of Korean War veterans are also declining.

In the past we have always been able to make Remembrance Day a very tangible event. We would see veterans marching to the cenotaphs in every town and city in Canada wearing their campaign medals and regimental berets. They were our annual tangible connection to their service and commitment to ensure we live in a democratic and free society. 

As time moves on we now face making other kinds of connections to these passing veterans. Younger people can only have remote connections to the considerable sacrifices made by their grand parents and in some cases great grand parents. Schools work to make the connection but now without any human faces of the veterans of World War 1 and 2. 

I am fortunate at my age. I have my memory connections as an officer of The Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR). Our regimental service in all Canadian operations since 1883 and even earlier through our regimental links with the Canadian Fusiliers and Oxford Rifles  is welded to my very person. 

In my time during the 1960’s we had members of the regiment who were still on active duty wearing campaign ribbons from World War 2 and Korea. Tangibility was not a pressing issue for us.

Each year we would see veteran RCR old comrades parading with us wearing World War 1 medals and some also wearing the ribbons of their second round of service during World War 2. Those kind of connections are fleeting for my grand children who are all Millennium born high school students. I do my best to keep them in the Remembrance Day loop but they live in another time and place.

One of my wife’s relatives in Belgium works very hard keeping the memory of our Canadian service to his country. He does uniformed reenactments of regiments that fought in Belgium during World War 1 and 2. He lives near Ypres so he is in constant touch with the horrendous experience of that city in both World War 1 and 2. Today, however, the ruined city of 1918 that was again damaged in 1944, has been restored to pristine condition.

Touring these sites with him is an education. We went to to the Menin Gate where the names of all the Commonwealth troops who died on the Ypres Salient in World War 1 are inscribed. I saw many Canadian names and regiments on that wall but the most tangible fact was something he pointed out to me. As we examined the World War 1 names there are World War 2 bullet holes in the Menin Gate from when it was fought over in 1944.  A poignant and very tangible experience since it was members of our First Canadian Corp who fought through here again in World War 2. 

One of my private moments of remembrance also took place Belgium some years back. I went alone to site of Passchendaele on the Ypres Salient to honour Canadians who died and those who held their positions in the first gas attacks in 1915. After examining our monument, I noticed that a path led through the evergreen hedges to a gate.

I opened the gate and stepped onto a farm field where cows were grazing. In the ground were zigzag depressions running off towards Sanctuary Wood. It was what is left of the front line trenches from World War 1. 

Zigzag trench lines in 1917

Half way across the field an angry man approached me. Obviously I was trespassing. He asked me in Flemish what I was doing on his land. I answered in English that I was tracing the first world war trench lines. He answered in English. “Are you an American?” No I said I am a Canadian and a member of The Royal Canadian Regiment. “Then you are welcome!” he answered extending his hand. He phoned his neighbours so I would have clear passage.

Vimy in France is our major monument to the Canadian soldiers who survived and died during World War 1. The Canadian Corp, and of course The Royal Canadian Regiment as part of that larger force, fought here in April 1917 to push the Germans permanently off this very high point of ground. Some claim that Canada became a country at this battle.

In 1992, my wife and I had the younger members of my family, Peter and Alexandra with us. They were both preteens and I wanted to let them know about our contribution to World War 1.  We were finishing a long  car trip from Belgium to Spain and back. We landed at Vimy late in the day and found that we could not get on a tour of the site and particularly the tunnels that still exist to move troops forward or to blow up the German lines with caches of high explosives.

There was one hope that we could get a tour. An Irish group was coming after attending a commemoration for the Battle of The Somme. If they would agree to us joining their tour then we could see the tunnel.

Suddenly a bus arrived and many people got off with security men. The guide went to confer with the Irish person in charge of the tour. This person turned out to be the Lord Mayor of Dublin. In addition, the  then Anglican Primate of Ireland, Cardinals of the Irish Catholic Church and many other protestant church officials plus politicians of all stripes from the Irish Parliament formed this group.

The Lord Mayor welcomed us and introduced two World War 1 veterans from their tour who turned out to be the reason they were at Vimy. One of the veterans had served with the British Army at Vimy as a runner between the British and Canadian lines. His task was to take messages from the tunnels if phone communications went down during the battle.

We then went down into the tunnels which are 30 meters underground and therefore impervious to heavy artillery fire. As we walked through the tunnel we noticed regimental crests carved into the chalk walls and messages from soldiers who waited down here for the main attack to start. There were command bunkers and medical aid rooms. It was living history with one veteran who had been down here for the Vimy Ridge battle in 1917.

Suddenly the veteran asked the guide which tunnel we were in. I recall her saying that it was Number 9 of the twelve that were dug. The Irish veteran said that if it was Number 9 tunnel he could show us where his friend was killed on the day of the battle. A hush fell over groups as this veteran led us further down the tunnel to a room near the end. It was a command room. 

In the corner was a stairs cut into the chalk that led up to ground level. The stairwell was filled with rubble held in place by chicken coop wire. The veteran was silent for a moment as it all sunk in. Then he recounted how his friend was standing near the stairs when a German shell blast came down the stairwell killing his friend instantly.

That is the most tangible experience I can relate about war having fortunately never experienced war myself. Each time I go to a Remembrance Day ceremony I think about the bullet holes in the Menin Gate, the zigzag trench line that still exists in a Flemish cow field and those who died there in a muddy carnage. Then I remember the look on the face of an old Irish veteran who came face to face with the horror of his friend’s death in a Vimy tunnel long, long ago in 1917.

Pro Patria

© Copyright 2014, Tom Thorne, All Rights Reserved.