The memorable lines of the most famous war poem penned by a Canadian, Lt. Col. John McCrae serving in France during World War I, read, “If ye break faith with us who die/We shall not sleep, though poppies grow/In Flanders fields.”
On the 60th anniversary of the end of the last most bloody war in human history, as Canadians find themselves in grave distemper and politics in the country risks becoming an endless winter of discontent, McCrae’s poem rings with irony, poignancy and rebuke.
Those Canadians who responded to the bugle call of arms in defence of democracy and freedom twice within a generation are mostly gone.
The few remaining heroes from our greatest generation of brave soldiers, sailors and airmen are rarely seen or heard from, and only briefly remembered in the bustle of our lives.
But without their courage and sacrifice, few among us can imagine what sort of world we would be living in—a world arranged in the ranking of master race and slaves, where those who are weak, deemed inferior, or unwanted, get regularly pruned from life as weeds from gardens.
Canada itself was relatively young when those men and boys, barely showing whiskers, left for battles across oceans and their women, with similar courage, filled their spaces at home.
It was a different world then, where people did more, and gave more.
They came from farms and factories—ordinary people with mundane hopes and fears who opened this country of lakes and mountains across a continent out of their own enterprise—and then when called upon to take arms, defeated professional warriors claiming superiority of race and culture.
It was due to them this country emerged into the first rank of nations in the world, a people respected for the leadership shown in battles fought and won.
Canada punched far above its weight class, and displayed a nobility in action and vision that secured it a place of distinction among its allies, particularly those in the English-speaking world.
Since then, Canada’s population has tripled and its economy has grown richer. Canadians live longer and are wealthier than the generations who shed their blood at Flanders and Vimy Ridge, at Dieppe and Normandy.
Yet the country seems less sanguine about its future, its politics driven more by rancour and stained by scandals than when McCrae’s generation left for distant shores for reasons they could have denied had anything to do with them.
We now quibble about the meaning of freedom and the wisdom of spreading democracy when called upon to support, merely by words, the liberation of a people from tyranny, or in doing something forceful in ending a genocide when and where we might make a difference.
We have allowed our patriotism to be cheapened in the same measure as we have seen our dominion reduced to a never-ending quarrel over the equalization cost negotiated between the richer and poorer members of the federation.
We find comfort in praises offered by an inept and corrupt United Nations even as our politicians have gutted the country’s armed forces, and taken scheming dictators for friends while dismaying our long-standing allies.
Hence, it is a fair question to ask if Canadians in becoming more prosperous have also become more feckless, or is it the men and women lacking in ideas and integrity who represent them in public life that have brought ill-repute to the country.
We may not deny, however, should McCrae and comrades mock us from where they lie—“Between the crosses, row on row,/That mark our place”—for nearly breaking faith with them as Canada edges so perilously close to sundering apart because of our selfishness.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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