JUNE 2004
by Barry Stagg
Perhaps a Canadian perspective on D-Day should begin with some history of what Canadians were doing on that momentous day, June 6, 1944. First it behooves us to see what the late Pierre Trudeau was doing on June 6, 1944. His actual whereabouts were uncertain but for sure he was not at D-Day, having eschewed active military service in favour of attending Harvard University. So while brave Canadian and American soldiers fought and died on the beaches of France, Canada's future prime minister was safe somewhere between Montreal and Cambridge, Massachusetts,U.S.A.
The man who would be the flower generation's prime minister in 1968 was living the life of the sheltered dilettante in June 1944. In fact, the only literary evidence extant of his presence in that year is his precious ode to the asceticism of canoeing. Landing craft in the bedlam of war was the lot of his military contemporaries, while it was canoes, solitude and privilege for Trudeau.
There is no point in veiling the dislike this writer holds for the sophistry and hypocrisy of the rich man's son from Montreal who shrewdly avoided his military responsibilities to his country. World War II was the single most important event of the century in which Trudeau lived and prospered. His self-absorbed journey through the terrible war years of 1939-1945 is, in itself, testimony to his contrarian rejection of the moral bedrock of Canadian citizenship.
In these dyspeptic days of 2004, we live the life that Pierre Trudeau shaped for us with his utopian carelessness and parochial obsessions with the province of his birth. While this durable politician eschewed bourgeois Quebec nationalism, he served its cause well, albeit with a passive-aggressive relationship to his Quebecois peers.
Trudeau's contempt for the military, indeed for the essentials of
any enduring national identity, is readily revealed in his
writings. Writing for Cite Libre in April 1962, he had
this to say:
"The third observation I would draw from the course of history is
that the very idea of the nation-state is absurd.....So the concept
of the nation-state, which has managed to cripple the advance of
civilization, has managed to solve none of the political problems
it has raised, unless by virtue of its sheer absurdity."
Six years after this modest diatribe,Trudeau was the prime
minister of Canada.
The entire Trudeau essay, "New Treason of the Intellectuals," can be found in Trudeau, Federalism and the French Canadians, published by Macmillan of Canada in 1968.
The squeamishness about military force that is so common in today's
Canada is a direct product of the scorn Trudeau had for the
Canadian military and for the traditional alliances of our country
with the United States and Britain. As historian Jack Granatstein
points out in
"Who Killed The Canadian Military" , Trudeau's equating of the
U.S.
and the U.S.S.R. was also obvious:
"Pierre Trudeau viewed soldiers as unintelligent thugs.
Likewise,his perception of the major powers was distorted: he saw
the USSR
and US as moral equivalents. His belief that Canada could find a
new way in foreign and defence policy led to European-based
Canadian military reductions in NATO."
The murderous international realm of terrorists, seen in horrid performance on September 11,2001, has not been enough to jolt many neutralists into support for strong security and sovereignty action by Canada. Still there persists the delusional charade of a peaceful, postmodern, ultra-civilized Canada, standing in pious contrast to the atavistic savagery of the United States and its reviled "War President". And the gulf widens, day by day, between the military and cultural heroism of D-Day and the fussy paralysis of sixty years gone.
In 1944, Canadians were honourably and necessarily part of the armed assault on the Nazis entrenched in continental Europe. Today, many tranquility addicts confuse an honourable peace with the arbitrary probation extended by terrorists. The inestimably valuable Sir Winston Churchill had it right , then and now, about such fatuous folk: "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."
Our octogenarian veterans, as brave youngsters, fought the Nazi menace while Trudeau mused in safety. We owe them not just our eternal and unconditional gratitude. We also owe them the duty to protect our country and our Western culture by force of arms. Putting ourselves in harm's way is our enduring obligation, one they met with honour, not so very long ago, on the beaches of France.
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