Bank Holiday weekend for us, in honour of Queen Victoria's birthday I believe. For some reason, Queen Vic's birthday is often accompanied by rain. And so.... this afternoon was bright and pleasantly muggy, hinting at the possibility of a thunderstorm. But a short while ago, big drops of rain started clattering and the air has cleared.It was of course during Victoria's reign and on her instruction that British Columbia was formed as the Province it is today, snatched from the grasping hands of the dastardly Americans. Well God bless you QV, and you were a strong woman and monarch, but let us not forget that you opposed the enfranchisement of women. So in that respect, you were the very worst kind of woman, the type that undermines other women.
There is a series of Canadian history programmes currently showing, about Canadian Heritage sites. Recently there was an episode about the Heritage Site of Beaumont Hamel.
On the first of July 1916, the first Newfoundland regiment was all but massacred on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme.
This was the same regiment that was the only North American regiment to fight in Gallipoli in 1915, in general a rout in which one of my own relatives perished.
Strategically, Beaumont Hamel should have been a hard won victory, the British army, of which the Canadians were a part, had been heavily shelling the German front for days. Out of 801 men of Newfoundland, only 64 survived alive and unwounded. These men were all volunteers, many not old enough to sign up, but in a day when not everyone had a birth certificate, whatever age they claimed to be, they were.
There is a strong Irish influence in Newfoundland, to the extent that you can't tell the difference between some Newfie accents and a southern Irish one. So these were men from Newfoundland, many of Irish descent, who went across the sea to liberate France.
Were they foolhardy, foolish or courageous and altruistic?
But that's not my point. How was it, I wonder, that Québec was so under-represented in the liberation of France? Where were the French of Canada when it came to freeing France? I cannot find figures, maybe I haven't searched hard enough, but from a quote in the Globe and Mail, I get this,
"There was overt opposition to conscription and relatively few French Canadians fought in the [first world] war."
Is this because they were peace Nazis or did they see it as not concerning them? Or were they craven cowards whilst their countrymen lay down their lives to save democracy and the cradle of their own existence?
We will celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday on my own late mother's birthday. Queen Vic was in fact born on the 24th of May 1819 and she died in 1901, thus missing the First World War.
We are told that a single letter from her to her son-in-law's father, the Emperor of Germany, was sufficient to avert a second Franco-Prussian war.
I guess the pen is mightier than the sword.
2 comments:
I always found that Newfoundland similarity very spooky. You are right, you really can't tell the difference.
Ireland's A rugby team played Canada tonight in the Barclays Churchill Cup. Ireland won 39-20. Lots of the Irish players are hungry to make the World Cup squad in September, so they went to Canada with a thing or two to prove, especially Jeremy Staunton.
Enjoyed your post.
You know, I see Canadians playing cricket, and I often see them playing footie, but I've never ever seen them playing rugby.
But I'm wondering if there is a connection here - when I watch the teams across the road playing footie - and bear in mind this is somehow managing to get through my sports filter - I can't help comparing with seeing kids play in Britain. Even watching them in the playground they always seemed much tighter players, more wired somehow, so that the smallest passing of a ball from one kid to another was edgy, here, the play just seems slower somehow, there's no urgency here.
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