Friends,
Yesterday was Remembrance Day and I attended the campus ceremony here. I was wearing civvy clothes with my regimental headdress and Op Athena decorations, but there were a lot of active and former members in attendance wearing full dress uniform. I spoke with one of the guys, and he is putting together an on-campus group for student-vets. I think this is a great idea and I look forward to having coffee with these boys and building up the group into something special. In somewhat related news, a few girls told me how handsome I looked which is always nice to hear, and all in all it was a great success as far as days dedicated to remembering the fallen go.
But not everywhere. It seems that sometime overnight the cenotaph in Toronto got vandalized:
The text, YE BROKE FAITH WITH US, is obviously a reference to Colonel John McCrae’s World War One poem, In Flander’s Fields, although the source I read was reluctant to definitively make that connection…fuckin’ MSM!!
Some further context: This past weekend Don Cherry was fired from Sportsnet for obliquely suggesting that immigrants were not sufficiently grateful to the Canadian soldiers who (ostensibly) have made this country such a desirable place to live. Are these two events connected? I don’t know but there seems to be a common theme.
First, let me get the superficial out of the way; This is fucking badass. Ye broke faith with us sounds like the kind of biblical warning a supervillain would issue before beginning a campaign of terror. I got a slight chill when I saw it and it reminded me of the vandalized statue of Superman from the Batman v Superman teaser from a few years ago.
To a lesser extent I was reminded of Raoul Silva’s cryptic warming to M before blowing up MI6 in Skyfall:
I can’t help it -I love gangster shit, and there’s nothing more gangster than a cryptic warning. As much as I’m against desecration, I am (net) more in favour of artistic expression/detournement.
Also, I’m not convinced that this is disrespect for veterans. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a veteran who did this on behalf of disgruntled veterans as a criticism of the Trudeau government cutting benefits for veterans. Or perhaps it was a veteran who was troubled by what he perceived as excessive kowtowing to ‘immigrant norms’ or the way (again), the Trudeau government paid off Omar Khadr. Add to the mix the Don Cherry controversy as a catalyst, and I could see a lot of moto soldier-types getting up like this.
Again, I’m not vouching for or co-signing the motivations or even the actions in an absolute sense. I’m simply speculating that this strikes me as an act on behalf of veterans by a veteran. And, as it was non-violent and subversive to a monument which is ostensibly for veterans in a climate where veterans feel they are being left out to dry, it strikes me as pretty badass and even poetic.
There is of course the possibility that it is a black op: Jussie Smollett for example, tried to defame the right by pretending he got attacked by them, and it’s possible that there are provocateurs who wish to turn public support away from white men by acting like a disgruntled veteran and doing something a disgruntled veteran would do. This strikes me as excessively complex though and perhaps ineffective, because if anything it would garner initial sympathy for veterans and that might not abate even if it were pinned on a veteran patsy. No, I don’t think this is a black op -too many competing sympathies.
Whomever did this, meant it.
Best,
-Dre
Write-Errantry 