Page 38 - Nov_2018

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of
the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves -- and are unheard by
anyone else -- that 1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the world's peacekeeping forces.
Canadian soldiers in the past half century have been the greatest peacekeepers on Earth -- in 39 missions on
UN mandates, and six on non-UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.

Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular non-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair
in Somalia, in which out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then
disbanded in disgrace -- a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for which, naturally, the Canadians
received no international credit.

So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has
given it in Afghanistan?

Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but
instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun.

It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost.

This week, four more grieving Canadian families knew that cost all too tragically well.

Kevin Myers is an Irish journalist and commentator, who currently writes for the Irish Independent. He is a
former contributor to The Irish Times newspaper, where he wrote the An Irishman's Diary column several times
weekly. Until 2005, he also wrote for the Sunday Telegraph in the UK.

True Canadian Heroes in the Air

These two selections are from the book "True Canadian Heroes in the Air" written by Arthur Bishop, son of
WW I ace William Avery "Billy" Bishop, with a Foreward byLt. Gen. Sutherland.

"During the First World War 22,811 Canadians served with the British air service and one Canadian served
with the French air service; 1,563 of them gave their lives."

"In that conflict the top four Canadian air aces accounted for a total of 230 enemy planes shot down, more
than any similar group among the Allied nations. By the end of that war, one third of those in uniform with the
Royal Air Force (an amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service) were Canadian."

"In her brief military history Canada's principal contribution to the cause of freedom was the British
Commonwealth Air Training Plan during World War II. During the period of 1939-45 this vast university of the
air produced an arsenal of trained air crews from Australia, Britain and New Zealand, as well as from Canada
herself. It inspired President Roosevelt to praise the Dominion as the 'aerodrome of democracy'."

"The Royal Canadian Air Force (formed in 1924), which at the outbreak of hostilities numbered a mere 4,000
officers and men, grew to 249,662 men and women of all ranks to become the fourth largest air force in the
world. In five years it trained a total of 131,553 aircrews - pilots, observers, navigators, gunners. wireless
operators, flight engineers - from the Commonwealth as well as from some occupied countries. That aside, the