You can't keep them down on the farm
The National Post editorializes about where the members (volunteers all) of the CF come from.
On Monday, for the first time in a generation, the Governor-General presented Canadian soldiers with medals for combat valour. As soldiers have always understood well, these medals each reward one conspicuous series of actions under fire, but they represent our gratitude for a hundred more that might have gone unseen or unrecorded...
These half-dozen men will all deny being heroes, but whether they are comfortable with it or not, they are destined to become symbols of martial virility in a world where the demand for it is still mercifully scant. They also symbolize a curious truth about our frontline soldiers, one that generally goes unnoticed: Despite the increasing urban concentration of the Canadian populace, none of them come from big cities.
Sgt. Tower is from Sidney, B.C., a town of about 11,000 on the Saanich Peninsula. Maj. Fletcher hails from St. Albert, a quiet residential satellite of Edmonton. Sgt. Michael Denine comes from the tough but close-knit St. John's neighbourhood of Shea Heights. MCpl. Collin Fitzgerald is from tiny Morrisburg, Ont., on the banks of the St. Lawrence. Pte. Jason Lamont comes from the Annapolis Valley village of Greenwood. And Capt. Derek Prohar's hometown -- with a population of all of 412 --is Avonlea, Sask.
This is not the profile one would expect to obtain from a random sampling of six Canadians of military age -- but the same mix of minor cities and microscopic villages is yielded when one studies the origins of the Canadian soldiers who did not come home alive from Afghanistan. You don't see very many names from Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal; the men and women doing the fighting and dying for us, to an overwhelming degree, come from places like Gananoque or Burgeo or Comox, with the Western and Atlantic provinces greatly overrepresented in the count. Depending on how you choose to look at it, the fact that most of the complaining about our war effort does seem to come from Toronto and Vancouver and Montreal either bespeaks a marvellous empathy on the part of urban dwellers, or an intrusion by them into a debate in which they may not necessarily have done much to earn a place [ouch! MC]...
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 8:13 a.m.
10 Comments:
What started out as an interesting article dwindled into crap.
That last sentence smacks of "They're doing their part. Are you? Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship. "
The only crap is why aren't urban dweller putting in their share?
flamingbear, and that would be a completely reasonable debate to have.
But, as an urban dweller who would follow the rules of this editorial, I wouldn't be allowed to have it.
Which, as a citizen, I find counter to the entire principles of democracy.
The sticking point in the editorial is that you don't have to earn a place in the debate: as a Canadian, it's yours whether you lift a finger or not.
Having said that, I agree with their implied rebuke of the urbanites and the higher end of the economic spectrum. The concepts of service and duty seem to have fallen out of favour.
Barbara Kay said it well in "Canada's invisible military" a few years back.
I think we could agree that the rural parts of the country are a little more enthusiastic about the military than the urban parts. Why that is, is a whole other conversation.
That said there's hardly any mid-to-senior noncoms in the Toronto garrison who didn't serve a tour or two in the Balkans during the 90s.
If it follows that Canadian urbanites are deeply conflicted about Afghanistan, then why would soldier-urbanites be any less conflicted then their civilian brothers? They all come out of the same talent pool. And don't forget that urban reservists might pay a higher price for leaving behind their unprotected higher-paying jobs. That is something of a disincentive to a guy whose family earns over 100k in the civilian world but will forfeit a rather significant chunk of that (plus possibly his civilian job) once he gets overseas.
Urban areas also have a high concentration of other-than-infantry trades, like HQ, communications, artillery, engineers, intelligence, medical, service/logistics, armored recce, etc. It stands to reason that a lot of these guys would end up deployed, but in such situations that their odds of being a casualty are far less than that of a rifleman from a rural infantry regt.
Thank you BB that's very much what I was on about.
Chris, that's interesting, I'd never heard pretty much everything you said.
1) No one I know is forfeiting cash to go overseas. A corporal makes about $6000 a month TAX FREE in Afghanistan. A soldier may lose his career though so that point is valid.
2) I can't speak for other urban centres but Vancouver has a normal proportion of infantry to other trades. And those other trades are often put in harms way. Ask anyone working with CIMIC.
3) As an urbanite reserve infanteer scheduled to deploy next year, my deployment has no effect one way or the other on urbanites who AREN'T ME "earning their place in the debate" (except possibly my immediate family). Likewise someone from the sticks gets just one vote, not extra because someone sharing his postal code is deploying. The only ones "putting in their share" are soldiers and their families.
4) Those opposing this mission (one of the most righteous we could get short of enemy tanks rolling down our own streets) are wrong because they are misinformed and ignorant, not because of where they live.
greg - I really don't hate to burst your bubble. But I know a heavy equipment operator that clears that in a month without working weekends. 12 hour days mind you but he's not getting shot at and he can go home whenever he wants.
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Greg, I think you may have misunderstood my (admittedly inelegant) phrasing. =)
When I said urban areas have a high concentration of other types of units, I meant relative to rural areas. A guy looking to join a Militia unit in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver has a much greater variety of units and specialties to choose from than a guy in Timmins, St. Catharines or Corner Brook.
It was not meant to imply that non-infantry units outnumber the infantry units in urban areas. That is clearly not the case.
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