When Stalin of Russia murdered more than five million Ukrainians by starvation in the 1930s, did the world rush to their aid? Didn’t Finland fight the Winter War alone against Russia in the winter of 1939-40? Most of the Canadian population were not even here for those events. Nor does the majority of our population know much about the events in the Punjab since India’s independence in 1947.
To those of us born in Canada, events such as pogroms and genocide are far away and too often forgotten. Canada welcomes people who are refugees from the problems of the world but we tire quickly from the import of these antipathies. We listen to the adventures of those who struggled to get to Canada. We are glad they are here.
But these people, whom we welcome, must learn to leave the old animosities in the old world that suffered them. And it is not that we do not care about the wrongdoing their people have endured. One on one, we can commiserate. There is also forgiveness.
Canadians cannot take sides in the atrocities of the past in faraway countries. The arguments of the Armenians, for example, belong in the old countries.
Most Canadians have only heard of the Waffen SS that a 16-year-old Ukrainian joined at the beginning of hostilities in the Second World War. It was a time when the hatred for the Stalin genocide of the 1930s was far more palpable in the Ukraine than any understanding of the horrors to come of the Nazis.
The man from the Ukraine who was in parliament the other day, reminds me of an Austrian who came to Canada after the Second World War who had been trained to fly the early German jet fighter planes. He was captured by the Russians. After the war he escaped from a Soviet Gulag and walked across a continent to return home to Austria. He was of noble heritage, yet nothing remained for him in his homeland.
He came to Canada and we accepted him. He had to dig ditches for a while to get a start but what we did not yet know about him was his skills as a designer and as an artist that would make him famous in his adopted homeland.
So be aware, no matter where you were born, Canada welcomes you. Just remember to always leave the old animosities in the old countries. They have no place here.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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