I am a proud Canadian and....

-next week is the Canadian Remembrance day -- 

 Lest we Forget 

  It is funny

 how it took someone in England to put it into words......

 Salute to a brave and modest nation - Kevin Myers , 'The Sunday

 Telegraph'LONDON :

 Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan , probably

 almost no one outside their home country had been aware that

 Canadian troops

 are deployed in the region.

 And as always, Canada will bury its dead, just as the rest of

 the world, as

 always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly

 everything Canada ever does.. It seems that Canada 's historic

 mission is to

 come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete

 strangers, and

 then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored.

 Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of

 the hall,

waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire

 breaks out, she

 suffers serious

 injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes,

 there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped

 glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.

That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American

continent with the United States , and for being a selfless friend of Britain

 in two global conflicts.

 For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions one foot in 

the old world and an address in the new one,

 and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the

 gratitude it deserved.

 Yet it's purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom

 in two world

 wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10% of

 Canada 's entire population of seven million people served in the armed

 forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied

 victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers

 in the entire British order of battle.

 Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright

 neglect, it's unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular

 memory as somehow or other the work of the 'British.'

 The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began

 the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the

 Atlanticagainst U-boat attack. More than 120 Canadian warships

 participated in the

 Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian soldiers went

 ashore on D-Day alone.

 Canada finished the war with the third-largest navy and the

 fourth largest air force in the world. The world thanked Canada with the same sublime

 indifference as it had the previous time.

 Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only

 if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign in

 which the United States had clearly not participated - a touching scrupulousness

 which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a

 separateCanadian identity.

 So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in

 Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are

 Canadian. Thus Mary

 Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox,

 William Shatner,

 Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter,

 Mike Weir and

 Dan Aykroyd Michael Buble, Justin Bieber have in the popular perception become American, and

 ChristopherPlummer, British.

 It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian

 ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably

 Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable

 to find any takers.

> 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 ofthem. 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'speacekeeping 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-

 Canadianimagination 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

 remainssomething 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 past

 year more

 grieving Canadian families knew that cost all too tragically well.

  Lest we forget