State Funeral: It's Unanimous
Not a crank in the House. You could say this is a rare day in the history of our country's politics. Needless to declare, I salute all members of parliament for doing the honourable thing:
The House of Commons has voted unanimously in favour of having a state funeral when the last Canadian veteran of the First World War dies.
The motion, introduced by the NDP, asked the government to honour all who served in the First World War by sponsoring a state funeral.
Of the 619,636 Canadians who served between 1914 and 1918, only three are still alive: Percy Wilson, 105, and Lloyd Clemett and John Babcock, both 106.
A state funeral is one of the highest honours a country can bestow on a person, but they're traditionally reserved for prime ministers and governors general.
The motion was prompted by an online petition launched by the Dominion Institute, a national organization that promotes Canadian history.
"We want to thank the tens of thousands of Canadians who signed our petition in support of state funeral," Rudyard Griffiths, the director of the Dominion Institute, said in a statement.
"By passing a motion to offer a full state funeral today the Parliament of Canada will allow a grateful nation to pay proper tribute to our last Great War veteran on his passing and honour the over 600,000 Canadians he served with under arms from 1914-1918."
The Institute said that since Nov. 6, around 100,000 Canadians had signed the petition.
posted by The Monarchist at 1:05 p.m.
3 Comments:
Good.
The MND had an interesting comment last week, to the effect of "There will be something, but what exactly, depends on the family of the person. They have to agree to a state funeral in order for us to provide it. You can't just take over someone's funeral because the public demands it."
If the families of one of these folks agree to a state funeral, then we ought to provide it. If none of them do, I hope we'll have the good graces to let them mourn in private.
Chris is wise.
The last thing that I would want would be us taking over a private moment of grief.
So my initial "Good." should be amended to "Good, as long as it's done with respect."
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