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"The dead soldiers being honoured yesterday [at the anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge] had lain in the ground for 90 years," The Globe's Alan Freeman and Doug Saunders write on today's front page in their article Queen, French leader echo PM's Afghan link to Vimy
"But on every leader's lips, on every observer's mind, was another group of Canadian soldiers, killed in an equally contentious battle on the other side of the world less than 24 hours before."
"It was probably inevitable that yesterday's Vimy commemoration would end up being used as a metaphor for the NATO war in Afghanistan — especially after six Canadian soldiers were killed in a roadside-bomb explosion there Sunday."
"But for the 25,000 Canadians here, the connections between the two wars followed very different lines. For some, Vimy is a shining example to the Canada of the 21st century. For others, it is a grim warning."
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Prime Minister Stephen Harper's earlier linking of the First World War battle to Canada's mission in Afghanistan provoked some controvery back in Canada, with critics arguing he should not have used the memorial ceremony to push a modern-day political issue.
What do you think?
Was Mr. Harper right to link the two events? Or was he playing politics? Or both?
Mr. Saunders and Mr. Freeman were online earlier today to take your questions about their article, the Vimy ceremony and the political furor.
Your questions and their answers appear at the bottom of this page.
In 2001, Doug Saunders became the first person to win three National Newspaper Awards in a row, and last year he won one a fourth time for his column, Reckoning.
After serving as an editorial writer and a writer on media, he moved to the paper's Los Angeles bureau, where he won three awards for critical writing.
He is now in The Globe's London-based European bureau, where he writes about international issues and writes his column.
Mr. Freeman has been writing for newspapers and wire services for more than 30 years.
A graduate of McGill and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, Mr. Freeman joined The Canadian Press in 1974. He spent nine years with The Wall Street Journal before joining The Globe in 1989 as an economics correspondent based in Ottawa.
From 1996, Mr. Freeman has been one of the paper's foreign correspondents, first based in Berlin, then London and Washington.
Editor's Note: We will follow the same rules for this question-and-answer session as we do for our usual live discussions. globeandmail.com editors will read and allow or reject each question/comment. Comments/questions may be edited for length or clarity. HTML is not allowed. We will not publish questions/comments that include personal attacks on participants in these discussions, that make false or unsubstantiated allegations, that purport to quote people or reports where the purported quote or fact cannot be easily verified, or questions/comments that include vulgar language or libellous statements. Preference will be given to readers who submit questions/comments using their full name and home town, rather than a pseudonym.
Jim Sheppard, Executive Editor, globeandmail.com: Welcome, Doug. Welcome, Alan. Thanks for taking the time today to take questions from the readers of globeandmail.com.
Let me start by asking you whether you were surprised by the overt linking by Prime Minister Harper, the Queen and other leaders of the Vimy ceremonies to the fighting in Afghanistan? Was this scripted in advance and would it have happened anyway? Or purely a reaction to the six deaths Sunday? Or a bit of both?
Doug Saunders: Hi, Jim, and thanks for inviting us to join this discussion.
Given that Canada is at war at the moment, albeit in a very different sort of war, a war that was the product of United Nations legislation and NATO leadership, it would have been hard to avoid any connection.
But Mr. Harper is indeed attempting a different sort of connection, one that I very much doubt was made to the Balkans in the 1990s, for example.
Rather than simply linking the suffering and loss, he drew ties to a certain idea of military obligation and sacrifice. General Rick Hillier, commander of Canada's armed forces, also used these words quite explicitly in his interview with me. The word "sacrifice" was used — a concept that is important within military communities but has become almost obsolete in the wider community.
One British magazine article described this as "the new, muscular Canada" — a concept that Mr. Harper's people are quite eager to promote. That is, they want Canada to be seen as leading international agendas, including military interventions, rather than just participating or standing by.
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