Last week marked the 79th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion carried out on the beaches of Normandy, France, by Allied troops during the Second World War.
As 79 is not as notable a number as 80, the date of June 6, 2023, came and went without much attention paid to its significance in history. But it should have. It always should.
Of all the things I’ve seen and read about D-Day over the years, one of the best remains a piece that writer Andy Rooney once delivered on 60 Minutes, back in 2004. As a war correspondent, Mr. Rooney landed on those same Normandy shores four days after the invasion began in 1944.
His memory of that time was vivid and harrowing. He put viewers on the same Utah beach he’d landed on, giving them a sense of what was waiting for him: rows upon rows of dead American soldiers, their bodies under drab, olive-coloured blankets, their boots sticking out at the bottom.
Anyone who lived through it, he said, knew someone who had been shot in the throat, someone who ended up hanging from the barbed wire in the water, their blood draining from the holes in their bodies. Mr. Rooney talked about his visit to that same beach years later and how he’d been overcome by the memories.
Canadian, American and British troops were trying to get back a continent stolen by Adolf Hitler’s army. The 24-hour D-Day death toll of 4,414 Allied personnel included 391 Canadians.
“It was one of the most monumentally unselfish things that one group of people ever did for another,” Mr. Rooney said. And he was certainly right.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that time, and about the enormous sacrifices so many people made on behalf of other people they’d never met. Those sacrifices also included ones made by people who weren’t on the front lines but felt the dark, painful effects of war nonetheless. I thought of the uncommon courage it took on the part of so many, including politicians who had to make life-and-death decisions. It was a deadly serious time that demanded solemn, resolute leadership.
I can’t help but juxtapose the great challenge of that period with the one we face today: climate change.
This country is literally on fire right now and we all know why. Wildfires are now a global phenomenon, one that has been predicted for years by climate scientists. The acreage burned is projected to double by 2050 because of the warming planet we have long been warned about.
We are now confronted with the greatest moral crisis of our time, the gravest-ever threat to our existence. But you wouldn’t know it listening to the debate in the House of Commons. No, what’s occupying the attention of the federal Conservatives is not climate change, but the budget. They are demanding changes that include getting rid of carbon taxes they say are ruining the economy.
Firefighters are pouring in from around the world to help us get control of the blazes ripping across the country and the Conservatives want to talk about getting rid of planned carbon tax hikes. This is what passes as sombre, serious-minded leadership on behalf of Canada’s Official Opposition.
It is beyond dismaying. And it is the same head-in-the-sand approach to the climate crisis that the leaders of Alberta and Saskatchewan are taking. They don’t want to talk about sacrifice. That’s an ugly word to them. This is about here and now and the votes they are looking for. Who cares what the world might look like five or 10 years from now? Who cares about doing our part to tame the climate monster? That’s India’s problem. Or China’s. Or America’s.
Hate on Justin Trudeau and the Liberals all you want, but at least they are trying to do something. Yes, they have missed climate targets but the carbon tax they’ve introduced is real; they are almost certainly taking a big political hit for it as well. The easier avenue would be the one the federal Conservatives and their most unserious Leader, Pierre Poilievre, want to take – and that is to do nothing.
It is enraging.
But they are taking the position for a reason; it sells to the Conservative base. There are millions of Canadians who are not interested in making any sacrifice in the name of climate change, either, because it would bring a certain hardship they don’t want to contemplate.
There were millions who didn’t want to fight in the Second World War. But thank goodness there were millions who did, many of whom paid the ultimate price.
We now need to find the same measure of unselfishness to defeat the greatest enemy this generation has ever faced.
Gary Mason