Guest column: Poppies don’t cover fact we fail many veterans in need

Article content

By: Catherine Ford

Another Remembrance Day has come and gone, with it the solemnity and the hushed voices, the recitation of John McCrae’s iconic poem In Flanders Fields.

The poppies disappear from lapels and, likely with them, the reason we wear them each year.

We hear a lot about sacrifice and honour; we hear too little about horror and pain. Maybe that’s because my father’s generation was expected to return home and continue their lives without causing much of a fuss. Few knew about post-traumatic stress disorder, known as shell shock or combat stress until 1980.

Article content

I know the trauma my father suffered in the war, but not from him. To listen to him, war was love, laughter and friendship. And dancing. Lots of dancing.

His three children grew up with stories of valour and honour. We didn’t know those stories came with blood and horror and so many deaths. The reasons were simple: Those young men who died in the Second World War sacrificed their lives for what they believed to be a higher purpose — at least that was what they were told — to keep the world free.

They could not have known their war would be followed by Korea and Vietnam, Kosovo and Rwanda, Iraq and Afghanistan. Now we watch Russia and Ukraine; Israel and Gaza.

The unintended consequences of wars are the effects on the young we send off to fight. Too often they return damaged. The fault is not theirs, the fault is ours. We continue to perpetuate the myth of valour, the suck-it-up factor.

I honour their sacrifice, but I cannot glorify it.

If veterans bear a fault, it is one of hope and optimism. Instead of telling us about the banality of war, the brutality and horror, they talked to us of their dreams. We did not deal with our father’s prisoner-of-war memories or his night terrors. We dealt with his happiness of survival.

Article content

The reason I do not wear a poppy is partly out of shame. It’s a hollow remembrance when this city (Calgary) has what I consider an abomination: a food bank for veterans.

Have we lost sight of what these men and women did for us? My choice to not wear a poppy is a personal statement. It does not besmirch Remembrance Day and those who genuinely remember.

When people ask me, I tell them I have no right to “remember” a father, uncles and a husband until those generations who came later are treated with the remembrance they deserve. Instead, they beg for food.

Maybe you have a different opinion about food banks. I accept that many people need them. Grocery stores are not giving away their products; they are not paying their customers’ electricity or water bills, covering the cost of gas or transit passes. And when there is more month left than money, charity is the least we can do.

But there is an ineffable sadness associated with a veterans’ food bank on Remembrance Day. We make a big deal of Nov. 11. Yet we allow the men and women who return from service broken and in need to witness our “remembering” even as we blithely allow them to scrounge for help.

Article content

This is not the first time I have written about this. I will continue to do so until we treat veterans with the respect they need for the other 364 days a year.

A field of crosses is installed temporarily each year on Calgary’s Memorial Drive. Nice image. It helps grandchildren and great-grandchildren understand.

But white crosses are only a silent symbol. Perhaps future generations will understand that symbols don’t replace action.

Maybe future generations will use the money spent on symbols, like poppies, to support the food bank — or, better still, make it and so many others across Canada unnecessary.

Catherine Ford is a regular Calgary Herald columnist.

Article content