By Arthur Weinreb
Thursday, July 19, 2007
About 200 soldiers from the Royal 22 Regiment stationed in Valcartier Quebec left for Afghanistan. A picture of one of the members of the Van Doos, holding his baby daughter graced the front page of the National Post on Monday. It was underneath the paper's main headline that read QUEBEC JOINS AFGHAN MISSION.
This was news to a lot of us. Many, if not most Canadians believed that the armed forces that we have in this country including those who have been and are deployed in Afghanistan, were Canadian troops, not Quebec troops. Who knew that Quebec had an army?
All we knew was that when troops stationed in Edmonton or Petawawa or Gagetown we never saw any headlines or stories about troops being deployed by Alberta, Ontario or New Brunswick. But then Quebec has never been just another province.
Quebec is not just a province; it is a nation. We know that for a fact because Prime Minister Stephen Harper said so. We don't know exactly what that means but that's hardly the point. Perhaps this is what the Post's headline writer was thinking when Monday's headline was written. Well, if the National Post won't support Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party, who will?
Then again perhaps the headline was justified. Let's face it, despite the fact that the troops are Canadian troops, the deployment of the Van Doos was bigger news that when troops stationed in other parts of Canada have been deployed. Quebec is after all a distinct society even if that fact is not officially recognized. Unlike other parts of Canada, Quebeckers trace their roots to France. France is the country that lined the streets of Paris with trees so that the Nazis could march in the shade. France is the country that will never see a civil war because that type of war is impossible when both sides are running away. So perhaps it is more newsworthy that troops that are stationed in Quebec were deployed in Afghanistan than it was when troops in other provinces are deployed. But that still didn't justify the labeling of men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces as being put in harm's way by the province of Quebec.
Anti-war sentiment is growing across the country but nowhere is it like what is happening in La Belle Province. Anti-war letters were sent out to areas in which members of the Van Doos and their families live. And when members of the regiment were introduced in the public gallery of the Quebec National Assembly some members of the PQ refused to stand and applaud. Soldiers in Quebec have been yelled at and called "baby killers" by protesters. Anti war activists in other provinces have been content by and large direct to their anger for the war at the government, Stephen Harper and of course the man who is behind all of the world's problems, George W. Bush. Even returning soldiers in the United States have not been subjected to the kind of abuse that those who returned from Vietnam were and what some of the Royal 22 Regiment in Quebec have and are being subjected to.
From what is happening in Quebec, not much has changed since the two world wars when conscription was an issue and many Quebeckers had no desire to get involved in what they perceived to be "England's war". Under all of the circumstances it is easy to see how the National Post would get confused and think that a big part of the story was that the deployed troops were stationed in the province of Quebec.
But the National Post did a great disservice to Canadians including federalists in Quebec and most importantly, those men and women who put their lives on the line and sometimes make the ultimate sacrifice for their country; which in case anyone is confused, is Canada.
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