Joe O'Connor
© Provided by National Post “We didn’t want to have the flags lowered forever.” Ray Deer at the cenotaph of the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 219, in Kahnawake, Quebec, on October 28, 2021.
Ray Deer answered the phone on a late October day and heard the news that Bo Curotte, a Vietnam War veteran, had succumbed to cancer. Deer is president of the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 219 in Kahnawake Mohawk territory, and such phone calls are an ever more regular occurrence.
Deer doesn’t dread the calls, mind you. He understands they are a part of life. The 100 or so Mohawk veterans still left in the First Nation community on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River are all getting on in years. Some were in the Korean War or Vietnam, while others were in the Gulf War and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Compared to other places in Quebec, you don’t see as many veterans as we have here in our territory,” he said.
Family members of the deceased often relay the message of a former soldier’s passing to the United States Army veteran, who, in turn, calls the branch at 219 River Road, as he did upon getting word about Curotte, and instructs the building’s caretaker to lower the flag in front of the legion to half-mast.
The next death is just as sure as the sunrise, and understanding that a tribute needs to be paid to each departed veteran is one of the reasons Deer and the Kahnawake elders resolved that after keeping the flags at half-mast for a 30-day mourning period in the wake of the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, it was time to raise them back up again.
“We didn’t want to have the flags lowered forever,” Deer said. “Quebec and Canada have never told us, as Mohawks, what to do, and so we put the flag back up when we felt it was the right time.”
Colby Cosh: Who will decide when Canada can raise its flag again?
Most Canadians say it was right to lower flags — but now raise them
Meanwhile, the flags on all federal government buildings across the river in Montreal and almost everywhere else in Canada remain at half-mast, as they have since May 30, and they will “until further notice,” according to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canadian Heritage.
But Trudeau’s symbolic gesture without an end date is about to collide with a fixed date, Nov. 11 — better known as Remembrance Day — and the rituals associated with it. Together with poppies, two minutes of silence, the laying of wreaths and the playing of the Last Post, lowering the national flag to half-mast at sunrise and keeping it there until sunset is an integral part of remembering.
“The rituals are crucial,” retired Gen. Rick Hillier said. “They are part of how we learn, and how we remember.”
But if the flag’s already at half-mast, the ritual can’t be performed, which would be unforgivable, Hillier said. Such was the former chief of the defence staff and Afghanistan veteran’s dismay that he pulled his car over to the side of the road while en route from the capital region to Montebello, Que., to say his soldier’s piece about what is shaping up to be a Remembrance Day fight over the flag.
“You can’t lower the flag on Nov. 11 unless you raise it,” he said. “We are past our best-sell-by date on this, and it is time to put the flags back to full-mast.”
Hillier supported Trudeau’s decision to lower the flags, but to paraphrase his present take: enough is enough. This isn’t just some old, lone wolf veteran popping off, either. A large majority of Canadians polled in mid-September said that lowering the flags was an appropriate response to the discovery of the graves in Kamloops, but a somewhat smaller majority also said it was time to raise them again.
And here we are, six weeks later, at half-mast, caught between recognizing a national tragedy and paying tribute to those who, in some cases, sacrificed their lives in defence of their country.
Ray Deer answered the phone on a late October day and heard the news that Bo Curotte, a Vietnam War veteran, had succumbed to cancer. Deer is president of the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 219 in Kahnawake Mohawk territory, and such phone calls are an ever more regular occurrence.
Deer doesn’t dread the calls, mind you. He understands they are a part of life. The 100 or so Mohawk veterans still left in the First Nation community on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River are all getting on in years. Some were in the Korean War or Vietnam, while others were in the Gulf War and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Compared to other places in Quebec, you don’t see as many veterans as we have here in our territory,” he said.
Family members of the deceased often relay the message of a former soldier’s passing to the United States Army veteran, who, in turn, calls the branch at 219 River Road, as he did upon getting word about Curotte, and instructs the building’s caretaker to lower the flag in front of the legion to half-mast.
The next death is just as sure as the sunrise, and understanding that a tribute needs to be paid to each departed veteran is one of the reasons Deer and the Kahnawake elders resolved that after keeping the flags at half-mast for a 30-day mourning period in the wake of the discovery of 215 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, it was time to raise them back up again.
“We didn’t want to have the flags lowered forever,” Deer said. “Quebec and Canada have never told us, as Mohawks, what to do, and so we put the flag back up when we felt it was the right time.”
Colby Cosh: Who will decide when Canada can raise its flag again?
Most Canadians say it was right to lower flags — but now raise them
Meanwhile, the flags on all federal government buildings across the river in Montreal and almost everywhere else in Canada remain at half-mast, as they have since May 30, and they will “until further notice,” according to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Canadian Heritage.
But Trudeau’s symbolic gesture without an end date is about to collide with a fixed date, Nov. 11 — better known as Remembrance Day — and the rituals associated with it. Together with poppies, two minutes of silence, the laying of wreaths and the playing of the Last Post, lowering the national flag to half-mast at sunrise and keeping it there until sunset is an integral part of remembering.
“The rituals are crucial,” retired Gen. Rick Hillier said. “They are part of how we learn, and how we remember.”
But if the flag’s already at half-mast, the ritual can’t be performed, which would be unforgivable, Hillier said. Such was the former chief of the defence staff and Afghanistan veteran’s dismay that he pulled his car over to the side of the road while en route from the capital region to Montebello, Que., to say his soldier’s piece about what is shaping up to be a Remembrance Day fight over the flag.
“You can’t lower the flag on Nov. 11 unless you raise it,” he said. “We are past our best-sell-by date on this, and it is time to put the flags back to full-mast.”
Hillier supported Trudeau’s decision to lower the flags, but to paraphrase his present take: enough is enough. This isn’t just some old, lone wolf veteran popping off, either. A large majority of Canadians polled in mid-September said that lowering the flags was an appropriate response to the discovery of the graves in Kamloops, but a somewhat smaller majority also said it was time to raise them again.
And here we are, six weeks later, at half-mast, caught between recognizing a national tragedy and paying tribute to those who, in some cases, sacrificed their lives in defence of their country.
© Peter J. Thompson/National Post The Canadian flag continues to fly at half mast, like this monument at the Hamilton Warplane Museum, out of respect for children who died and suffered in the Canadian Residential School system, October 28, 2021.
Remembrance Day was originally called Armistice Day. It was first observed in 1919 after King George V called for all countries of the British Empire to observe two minutes of silence on Nov. 11 at 11 a.m.
“At a given signal, which can be easily arranged to suit the circumstances of each locality, I believe that we shall all gladly interrupt our business and pleasure whatever it may be and unite in this simple service of silence and remembrance,” the King wrote in a letter that was received by governments and carried in newspapers across the empire.
Canada lost 66,000 men in the First World War, and another 170,000 returned home wounded, out of a population of eight million. Every town, village, family, indeed, every Canadian was, in some way, touched by the war, and at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, the country stood still. People in the streets, their homes or cars, and workers at factories, offices and farms all stood silent for two minutes.
“It was a deafening silence,” said Tim Cook, resident historian at the Canadian War Museum and author of 12 books. “If you think about the sounds of the guns of the Western Front — a sonic assault — and then if you think that there were over 500,000 Canadian veterans, and what they would have thought of the silence, it was a hugely important moment.”
There were loud injustices amid the quiet, of course, indicative of an age when the residential school system had already been in operation for decades. Even highly decorated First Nation veterans, such as famed Ojibwa sniper Francis (Peggy) Pegahmagabow, came back to a country where he couldn’t vote, was not considered a citizen and couldn’t access his military pension.
“When he was in uniform, he was considered an equal,” Adrian Hayes, author of a book on Pegahmagabow, once told CBC News. But not so much when he came home.
In the years that followed 1919, the two minutes of silence would be joined by other rituals of remembrance, including the lowering of flags to half-mast, but each aspect of what became the Remembrance Day ceremony that Canadians are familiar with today grew integral to the whole.
Lose any one of them, and there is a risk that what gets lost is the meaning of each, whether that is pinning a poppy to one’s lapel or understanding that a lowered flag is a gesture that reaches across the generations.
“We could probably never do enough for our veterans, based on what they have done for us,” Hillier said.
The dead can’t talk. But the living can at least remember them.
Remembrance Day was originally called Armistice Day. It was first observed in 1919 after King George V called for all countries of the British Empire to observe two minutes of silence on Nov. 11 at 11 a.m.
“At a given signal, which can be easily arranged to suit the circumstances of each locality, I believe that we shall all gladly interrupt our business and pleasure whatever it may be and unite in this simple service of silence and remembrance,” the King wrote in a letter that was received by governments and carried in newspapers across the empire.
Canada lost 66,000 men in the First World War, and another 170,000 returned home wounded, out of a population of eight million. Every town, village, family, indeed, every Canadian was, in some way, touched by the war, and at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, the country stood still. People in the streets, their homes or cars, and workers at factories, offices and farms all stood silent for two minutes.
“It was a deafening silence,” said Tim Cook, resident historian at the Canadian War Museum and author of 12 books. “If you think about the sounds of the guns of the Western Front — a sonic assault — and then if you think that there were over 500,000 Canadian veterans, and what they would have thought of the silence, it was a hugely important moment.”
There were loud injustices amid the quiet, of course, indicative of an age when the residential school system had already been in operation for decades. Even highly decorated First Nation veterans, such as famed Ojibwa sniper Francis (Peggy) Pegahmagabow, came back to a country where he couldn’t vote, was not considered a citizen and couldn’t access his military pension.
“When he was in uniform, he was considered an equal,” Adrian Hayes, author of a book on Pegahmagabow, once told CBC News. But not so much when he came home.
In the years that followed 1919, the two minutes of silence would be joined by other rituals of remembrance, including the lowering of flags to half-mast, but each aspect of what became the Remembrance Day ceremony that Canadians are familiar with today grew integral to the whole.
Lose any one of them, and there is a risk that what gets lost is the meaning of each, whether that is pinning a poppy to one’s lapel or understanding that a lowered flag is a gesture that reaches across the generations.
“We could probably never do enough for our veterans, based on what they have done for us,” Hillier said.
The dead can’t talk. But the living can at least remember them.
© Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press/File Retired Gen. Rick Hillier supported Justin Trudeau’s decision to lower the Canadian flags, but believes it is time they go back up.
Hillier said he “loves” Remembrance Day, because it reminds him of why he wanted to become a soldier: to be a part of something bigger than himself.
“I try to live out Nov. 11 as it was intended: to remember, to pay tribute and to learn,” he said.
Back in Kahnawake, Ray Deer talks about his life’s trajectory. Before he joined the army, his view of anyone who wasn’t First Nation was that they were out to steal his land or cause him some other harm.
“I thought every non-native person was ready to discriminate against First Nation people,” he said.
The army opened his eyes to other cultures. He found that some people were bad, but many more were good, and many simply had no real clue about the past, or of the inequities many First Nation people face in the present.
There had yet to be a punch-to-the-heart national moment of mourning of the kind that followed the discovery of the unmarked graves, first in B.C., and, a month later, near the former Marieval Indian Residential School east of Regina.
Deer has had conversations since then with his non-native friends.
“I have told them, ‘It is not your fault, in this time, what happened in the past, and if you acknowledge that something was done wrong — that’s what you need to do,’” he said.
Deer’s older brother, Ricky, was sent to a Jesuit-run residential school in Spanish, Ont. He came home, but not everyone did.
“They are going to find more graves,” Deer said. “But I think, with the flag, Canada has to answer the question, how much is enough?”
History moves forward, and so have the Kahnawake Mohawk. The legion is planning a Thanksgiving-style feast for the Saturday before Remembrance Day, and community veterans on Nov. 11 will take part in a ceremony at the local school.
Stories will get told, lessons taught and the flags will be lowered to half-mast, where they belong on Nov. 11, and where they will remain until sunset.
• Email: joconnor@postmedia.com | Twitter: oconnorwrites
Hillier said he “loves” Remembrance Day, because it reminds him of why he wanted to become a soldier: to be a part of something bigger than himself.
“I try to live out Nov. 11 as it was intended: to remember, to pay tribute and to learn,” he said.
Back in Kahnawake, Ray Deer talks about his life’s trajectory. Before he joined the army, his view of anyone who wasn’t First Nation was that they were out to steal his land or cause him some other harm.
“I thought every non-native person was ready to discriminate against First Nation people,” he said.
The army opened his eyes to other cultures. He found that some people were bad, but many more were good, and many simply had no real clue about the past, or of the inequities many First Nation people face in the present.
There had yet to be a punch-to-the-heart national moment of mourning of the kind that followed the discovery of the unmarked graves, first in B.C., and, a month later, near the former Marieval Indian Residential School east of Regina.
Deer has had conversations since then with his non-native friends.
“I have told them, ‘It is not your fault, in this time, what happened in the past, and if you acknowledge that something was done wrong — that’s what you need to do,’” he said.
Deer’s older brother, Ricky, was sent to a Jesuit-run residential school in Spanish, Ont. He came home, but not everyone did.
“They are going to find more graves,” Deer said. “But I think, with the flag, Canada has to answer the question, how much is enough?”
History moves forward, and so have the Kahnawake Mohawk. The legion is planning a Thanksgiving-style feast for the Saturday before Remembrance Day, and community veterans on Nov. 11 will take part in a ceremony at the local school.
Stories will get told, lessons taught and the flags will be lowered to half-mast, where they belong on Nov. 11, and where they will remain until sunset.
• Email: joconnor@postmedia.com | Twitter: oconnorwrites
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