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EDITORIAL

The poppy forever

November 10, 2003

The owners of Pier 1 Imports/Canada, a U.S. based company just don’t get it. Pier 1 has opted not to engage itself in the annual Royal Canadian Legion Poppy Campaign.

As partner in the small but growing number of businesses across Canada abandoning the annual poppy drive, the corporate giant both catalogues and categorizes the sale of Remembrance Day poppies as just another charity.

Our veterans may not be part of the YUPPIE crowd buying Pier 1’s anti-stress bath salts and candles, but they fought for our country, earning the rest of us liberty and justice. Their sacrifice did not end with World War 11 but continues today in places like Afghanistan.

It can be said that if there were no war veterans, there would be no ringing tills at Pier 1.

Only the most hardened souls among us could turn their backs on the thousands of veterans and Legion volunteers who turn out year after year in any kind of weather with their plastic poppy pins.

Public outrage forced Home Depot to change its policy last year after 71-year-old Ken Cook was unceremoniously turfed from the paved lot of the hardware superstore. That move brought veterans and volunteers in out of the cold to sell poppies at front-of-store cash desks.

The Pickering public library board was forced to rethink a decision that saw poppy sales banned from all five of its branches.

The international policy of Pier 1 is to collect only for UNICEF and a breast cancer foundation. In politically correct lexicon, where collecting for charity is concerned, Pier 1 likes to be involved in the big picture.

"We like to be involved in bigger, united campaigns," spokesman Jim Waechter told the Calgary Herald. "I agree, veterans are a valuable piece of our heritage, but we promote consistency across all our stores. If someone comes into one store and wants to drop off a charity box, we say no. We say no to all of them, not just the poppy fund."

There is nothing bigger than freedom and liberty in the big picture of life. We can not say where Waechter was during the war, but we can say he could not be where he is today were it not for the cause espoused by veterans and Legion volunteers come Remembrance Day.

There were dozens (not hundreds because our veterans are dying off) of retired soldiers attending a veteran association conference in Toronto while the banning poppy sales debate was underway this year.

"These people are living the life that we fought for when we risked our lives for democracy," said Edward Carter-Edwards, who spent a year in German prison camps during the Second World War after being shot down over France.

"It’s deplorable. To turn their backs now, 50 years later, on the very people who gave them their freedom--it’s a disgrace."

Art Adams, an air force veteran who was stationed in Burma during the Second World War had this to say: "I just don’t understand the thinking. Is their point that they are tired of hearing about veterans? Is having a box to sell poppies there too much to ask?"

It’s tragic beyond measure that the sacrifice of the brave young men and women of 50 years ago was replaced by liberal, politically correct times. In the space of 50 short years, we went from selling poppies to smoking them.