The Editor,
This year's Remembrance Days observations coupled with a number of headlines related to Canada's veterans and their treatment by the our federal government have prompted me to put my thoughts in some kind of order.
My father was a Second World War veteran and, like so many of his fellows, he suffered from what was later recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder - suffered for his entire life. He was by turns a chain-smoking, raging drunk, violent, moody, sometimes happy and kind, but always a whisker away from a verbal or physical outburst.
I was afraid of him, I despised him. I didn't understand. My family, like the families of many of my friends and relatives, tried to live below the radar, to avoid these men as much as possible. We didn't understand.
Our veterans were sacrificed to meet the political ends of our so called leaders. Nothing new, I know, something that continues today. That damage echoes through our lives and our society like the sound of the big guns and bombs.
For the most part, I've put away the emotions that informed my youth but this year an old anger has been stirred. My local paper ran an ad with the face of my Conservative MP superimposed on a field and featuring a poppy. In the national news, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's hooded smile, standing at attention. I want to vomit. The injuries, physical and spiritual, that our veterans have suffered are permanent. Their need for care will be lifelong, to one degree or another.
So what thanks do we give to these people? Their value is weighed by bean counters, hollow men who want to be seen publicly giving thanks while quietly turning their backs on the broken people who fought for them. Cut back on their pensions, reduce their care, take a lump sum. Fight our lawyers, if you must.
This current government's claim to have respect for and to care for our veterans is disgusting.
I wish I could cast some of our politicians into the tumult that is the life of a Veteran and his or her family. I wish they could know that pain. It might make them a little more human.
The government has to do right by these people, their lives are on us now. They are our responsibility and we're all diminished by the actions of our leaders. We are discarding human beings, every one of them deserving, worthy and needing our compassion. We have to do right by these people because what we're really talking about is just a pocketful of beans. A bloody pocketful of beans.
This is Harper's Canada, this is our communal shame.
Barry Billas,
Port Moody
