The Peace Poppy

Tomorrow I resume my 2-hour Chinese lessons with the Ottawa Chinese Language Learning Centre; having left off at Lesson 5, my tutor promises that ..."we will learn Lesson 6 tomorrow after a quick review."

nǐ jǐdiǎn kāishǐ shàngkè? — jiǔ diǎn bàn.

Douglas Hardy

My mother when she was with me last month heard me trying to enunciate phrases like that, and it reminded her of the early 1940s and her cousin Douglas who in those days was likewise trying to learn Chinese, before being posted to the Far East.

"We used to dissolve into helpless giggles when he tried to make those funny noises!" she remembered.

Douglas Hardy was a twenty year-old Conscientious Objector, whose sincerity had made such an impression on the tribunal who examined his pacifist motives that he was given an unconditional discharge from military service. In spite of this exemption he opted to join the Friends' Ambulance Unit, in order to serve his country in that way. Douglas set off with the FAU for India, Burma and China and my mother and the rest of the family never saw him again. He died of typhus in 1942.

My cousin Wendy has done some research on this story, to which there's a reference here.

Douglas' parents never recovered from their grief (he was their only child). I met his mother, Lil, a couple of times and still have a poetry book she once gave me.

This year in Ottawa, there's a fuss in the media over the wearing of white poppies in memory of Conscientious Objectors and in memory of civilians who like the soldiers, sailors and airmen, have also suffered and died in wartime. Some people disapprove of the white poppy; some don't.

*****

This blogpost was the starting point for a letter to the Ottawa Citizen, published in that paper on November 11th, 2010.

War and Peace

Earlier this month, like Prince Charles and his wife and in a bigger than ever crowd of Canadians, I stood on Parliament Hill near the war memorial on the morning of Armistice Day (or Remembrance Day, as it's called here). I took some photos of the parade and wanted to record in my blog that the twenty-one gun salute, which sent plumes of smoke wafting over the parliament buildings, frightened the little children in the crowd so much that they nearly all cried, and periodically drowned out the voices of the older children singing in the choir. I thought this altogether symbolic of how war deafens and damages us. Four fighter jets zoomed overhead in an ear-splitting fly past as well, so that we lost track of the poem being read.

This is what the children were singing:

I vow to thee, my country
All earthly things above
Entire and whole and perfect,
The service of my love;
The love that asks no question,
The love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar
The dearest and the best;
The love that never falters,
The love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted
The final sacrifice.

And there's another country,
I've heard of long ago
Most dear to them that love her,
Most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies,
We may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart,
Her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently
Her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness,
And all her paths are peace.