The ban on military chaplains from praying at public ceremonies is a stinging symbolic proof that freedoms our soldiers fought for have been lost. Pictured: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (left). Photo Credit: Justin Trudeau/X.
In 1945, the Allies won their battle against aggressive, expansive regimes that sought to subjugate everyone under their dominance. Now, almost 80 years later, Canadians face a similar enemy again–found this time in their own government.
The ban on military chaplains from praying at public ceremonies is a stinging symbolic proof that freedoms our soldiers fought for have been lost. The ban, announced in October 2023, had a one-day reprieve on Remembrance Day last year, but no sequel is forthcoming. Banning chaplains from praying makes as much sense as banning hockey players from shooting the puck. Clergy are as handicapped as an able-bodied person strapped down into a wheelchair.
This decision was made in an unfolding government response to numerous factors. One was a court decision that banned prayer and religious symbolism from city hall meetings. This verdict, a response to offended atheists that offended far more people than it appeased, also inspired the military directive to ban clergy from openly displaying religious symbols.
Indigenous offense was another pretense for the military’s ban on open displays of religion. Even though many Indigenous people are Christians, the cross allegedly triggers trauma and offense among others.
Seriously? How tough or ready for war could such soldiers be? How can they claim to stand in the tradition of past Indigenous warriors who fought in the World Wars for Christian Canada, or even other ones who watched their fellow soldiers get wounded and killed in countless ways for seemingly countless days? Now that is trauma.
How far this is from the adage of U.S. General George S. Patton. He famously told his soldiers to get past their fears in combat: “When you reach over and put your hand into a pile of goo that was your best friends face, you’ll know what to do.”
Instead of promoting traditional Canadian courage, rights, and freedoms, the military has become another place for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and those similar-minded to impose vaccine mandates and a new religion to replace faith: diversity, equity, and inclusion. Getting the best fighting force possible with the best people in leadership has given way to recruiting as many women and sexual and racial minorities as possible. On the battlefield that won’t help at all.
Our federal government has such poor judgment, it had our military schmoozing with counterparts of the most powerful autocracy into the world. In January 2018, the Canadian Armed Forces sent a delegation to China to observe winter training conducted by the People’s Liberation Army. One month later, Canada returned the favour on our soil.
Perhaps it should not surprise us that a government that recognize its current adversaries can’t remember its past enemies either.
In September 2023, Canadian MPs gave two standing ovations to Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian veteran of World War II. Only later did the government apologize due to Hunka’s service in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), a military formation of Nazi Germany.
Speaker Anthony Rota had to resign for his role in introducing Hunka, but Canada was clearly embarrassed. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the Parliamentary applause for Hunka “disgusting.”
“If the speaker of the Canadian parliament says that during World War II this Canadian-Ukrainian…fought against the Russians, he cannot help but understand that he fought on the side of Hitler…But if he doesn’t know that Hitler and his minions fought against Russia during the war, then he’s an idiot,” Putin said, to chuckles and applause from a public audience.
“It means he just didn’t go to school, has no basic knowledge. But if he knows that this man fought on Hitler’s side and calls him a hero of Ukraine and a hero of Canada, then he is a villain. Either this or that.”
Unable to dispute logic and the clear facts of World War II, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland just chalked Putin’s comments up to “Russian propaganda” and urged Canadians to push back against it.
In the Great War, Canadian John McCrae saw the graves of his fellow soldiers and warned what would happen if Canada forgot.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row…
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Clearly, we have forgotten. After hockey commentary Don Cherry said in 2019 immigrants should wear poppies, he was fired. The irony of firing Cherry on Remembrance Day for this reason was either completely lost on Sportsnet or just a big middle finger to tradition and honour in the name of diversity.
Canada is in the darkest days of its history. Yet our collective failure to remember leaves us blithely unable to recognize it. Lest we forget.
