Why should remembering Winston Churchill and D-De matter to Canadians?

Content of the article

These days, it's popular to dismiss historical figures if their viewpoints don't match ours. Thus, for those who practice such willful historical amnesia, streets, bridges, and entire neighborhoods are renamed or statues removed to satisfy Orwell, to avoid what is supposed to be a stain on the human species—the men and women who came before. we created Canada.

Content of the article

But go that way, and any person in history who has done something useful, regardless of the other biased views on the subject, can definitely be eliminated.

Content of the article

Consider a few examples. One famous Indian activist advised German Jews not to use force against the German SS after Kristallnacht. He also wrote to Adolf Hitler in 1941 to let him know that the writer “does not believe that you are the monster described by your opponents.”

It was Mahatma Gandhi who was very naïve about Hitler and the Nazis, but who was right to demand India's independence from the British.

In the early 19th century, progressives believed that eugenics—the assumption that race was a real “thing” and important to outcomes—was scientific. They were wrong. Eugenics was pseudoscientific nonsense.

But many progressives who held this view, among them the famous 5 suffragists, were active in the early feminist movement to gain the vote and equal rights for women. Early progressives were deeply wrong about eugenics, but argued that women deserved the same rights as men.

Content of the article

Content of the article

Or think about it this way: if one is not a god, then in 2024 we all have beliefs and opinions that future generations will consider delusional or worse. We all need to give some slack to those who came before us and endured mass poverty, the Great Depression and wars and managed to create a Canada that is still steadily improving.

As we approach the 80th anniversary of D-Day, we must resist glossing over harsh history and erasing it in favor of preemptive, moral self-congratulation.

More specifically, at the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Calgary, we will soon (June 6) remember the 15,000 Canadian soldiers who lost their lives during the invasion of Normandy, with 960 killed or wounded, and thousands more. Canadian Navy and Air Force personnel who served with distinction on that terrible day. We also remember the more than 43,000 Canadians who died in World War II to free Europe from Hitler's tyranny, and a large part of Asia from Imperial Japan.

Every Canadian should remember those who died in that war, as well as the lone voice of the 1930s warning against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis – Winston Churchill. Thanks to their efforts, tens of millions of other allies and leaders, at least part of our planet, could breathe freely after 1945.

Content of the article

This cohort includes thousands of Indigenous Canadians who served in World War II and World War I in the hope that Canada would one day treat them more fairly than they do today. It includes Canadians of every ethnicity, religion and color who came to Canada in waves of immigration and believed that Canada was a place where they and their children could succeed.

Now let's turn briefly to Churchill, who visited Calgary and the West for the first time in 1929, and we at the Churchill Society of Calgary remember. Churchill was impressed by southern Alberta and its great potential, including farming country and the Turner Valley oil fields, and was fascinated by Banff, Lake Louise and Emerald Lake, where he painted scenes he thought surpassed even Switzerland.

Churchill and, for example, Stalin, Mao or Hitler, we should remember people for their achievements and not try to destroy them in memory for their shortcomings, which we all have. Churchill was an imperialist as well as an early politician who championed the betterment of the working poor; An opponent of Gandhi but a Britisher who wanted untouchables and Muslims protected from the majority population; and a staunch defender of basic justice, as when he refused an American military inquiry into the use of white American segregation practices against black servicemen in British pubs.

Content of the article

As we approach the anniversary of D-Day, his sacrifices helped push back and destroy Nazi Germany and thus defeat one of the most evil tyrannies in human history. They think they have reached the pinnacle of moral virtue, and they presume to appreciate and casually dismiss the efforts of previous generations to create a free, prosperous world.

On the contrary, we owe the generation of World War II an enormous debt of gratitude. Not to forget.

Mark Milk is the President of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Calgary. The Calgary Herald has been a community partner since its inception in 1966. The Churchill Society's D-Day commemoration will be held on June 6 and will feature Winston Churchill's great-grandson, Randolph Churchill III, as the keynote speaker. Dinner tickets are available at www.churchillcalgary.ca.

Content of the article