International Day of UN Peacekeepers - May 26, 2024

Transcript of Opening Remarks by Dr. Karen Ewing.

Dr. Karen Ewing delivering opening remarks at the Veterans Memorial Park celebration of International UN Peacekeepers in May 2024.

Good morning, and Welcome to the Veterans Memorial Park located in Mi'gmagi the ancestral home of the Mi'gma on Turtle island, a place we call Canada. Peacekeepers, Serving members, Veterans, Families of the Fallen. Greetings and welcome to the families and friends of Sergeant Tyson Bowen and Master Corporal Reginald Chabassol, and their Military families, 2nd Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment and the 37th Battalion.

Members of RCMP Pipes and Drums, Legion Colour Party, UNNATO Motorcycle Group, honoured guests, Mr Allen Chapman, ladies and gentlemen. You are all welcome here on this International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers to remember those who served and continue to serve in the cause of peace. There is no greater cause, and no more important time.

For many years, without fail, I have said, from this very podium, we live in dangerous times. This year war rages in Ukraine and Gaza. Russias, Putin plans to test NATO's resolve in Poland, Israel's president and Hamas leaders are wanted for war crimes. Estonia contemplates sending troops to Ukraine and Germany considers conscription. Russian school children are being taught to fly drones... and Ukraine prepares to empty its prisons for fighters, China's (She) Xi, is set to invade Taiwan. and here in North America, grandparents outfit their grandchildren with bullet proof backpacks.

These are dangerous times. Dangerous for us, and for our children, for all children, for our world and for our soldiers deployed in operation Impact in Iraq, Nanook in our North, Operation Reassurance as part of NATO's Operation Steadfast Defence in Europe. And on our UN Peacekeeping operations in Mali, Haiti, the Golan Heights, Kosovo, Cypress the DRC,

South Sudan and Lebanon.

June 6th will mark the 80th Anniversary of D-day. Another dangerous time. We remember the tremendous sacrifices made on the beaches of Normandy. And we would do well to remember that the outcome of operations OverLord and Neptune on June 6th 1944, was not inevitable and instead depended not only on Allied Forces but on countless selfless acts of local resistance fighters and civilians in coastal France, in preparation for and the aftermath of the March toward Berlin and what was to become the beginning of the end of WWII.

Mr Allen Chapman at 99 years of age, a stoker on a minesweeper during WWII and is with us today is one of the few remaining who bore witness to the tragedy that was WWII.

After WWII Canadian Lester B. Pearson spearheaded the creation of the United Nations Peacekeeping force. Since its creation in 1948, 125,000 Canadians have deployed on Peacekeeping missions, 130 did not come home. 4200 Peacekeepers from many nations have given their lives in the cause of peace. We remember them today. For many people around the world, in areas of regional, tribal ideological, civil conflict or territorial war... peace... looks like a blue beret. This now global symbol of peace, the blue berets are among us, standing alongside us today, a symbol of peace, a symbol of hope. With wars raging; liberal democracies failing and the clawing back of rights and freedoms, here and elsewhere

in our world... Peace and peacekeeping seems futuristic and... aspirational.

In a recent heartbreaking interview with a Ukrainian soldier near Harkiev, the reporter asked when he thought the war would end. “The war will not end” he stated, “my father fought the Russians, I fight the Russians, my son will fight the Russians...the era of war has begun.” Arguably it never ended.

Its hard for most of us to imagine...war...or peacekeeping for that matter. War and peacekeeping occur albeit continuously...but...on the other side of the world. Sure, we are imbedded with correspondents who report to us the horrors of war from the trenches and tunnels, and the basements of theatres, and maternity wards, and rubble, so much rubble... But only for 20 minutes or so on the news. You can avoid it entirely with a bit of effort. The misery that is war today is not in dispatches, or newspapers, or news reels, or telegram - it is shown to us in real time. You can almost taste it. All with barely a ripple in humanity.

Unless...unless you or someone you love wears a uniform, or has worn a uniform and has risked body and mind to try to regain humanity somewhere in this world and in so doing

retain our own.

Ernst Toller tells us...”most people have no imagination...if they could even imagine the suffering of others they would not allow it.” Unable to move the people of his generation to rise against the Holocaust, Ernst succumbed to the demons of genocide that haunted him.

Genocide...inseparable it seems from today's conflicts. Perpetrated against populations and by fearful, evil, ambitious men and how they do rise...

Our leaders make impassioned speeches but keep their distance. And we...we too would rather spare ourselves the sight...after all, it is hard to go about our daily lives, worried with the price of groceries,while haunted by cries of hungry children; It is difficult to complain about our universal health care, with visions of bloodied shrouds, keening women and angry men.

Can we no longer be moved?...Are our hearts so hardened that we have become like TS Elliot's Hollow Men? with voices, "...that whisper like wind in dried grass". With leaders coy

and careful their “words quiet and meaningless,” politically astute but morally corrupt. Our United Nations “A paralyzed force, that gestures without motion.”

And we, all of us hollow like scarecrows, with no eyes, no ears, hearts mere husks. Afraid to meet the eyes of those who died in battle, afraid to meet the eyes of the families whose lips form prayers to broken stone. Afraid to bear witness.

Hearts unable to be moved are no longer human hearts. Some say we are already living in a post human world. In a race to the bottom, of criminality and corruption, a resurgence of

authoritarianism, fascism, rampant nationalism to the point of isolationism - which has always led to war.

In our greatness we have made ourselves small. We know, justice, doesn't just happen. Humanity, peace doesn't just happen. In bearing witness to the suffering of others. Our hearts may break, and that is what keeps us human. The heart that bears witness is the heart of our humanity.

Men and women in uniform have borne witness to things eyes should never see, ears should never hear. My grandfather Royal Navy WWI. What did he, a Newfoundlander, a good God fearing man, see in his dreams after 6 years on the North Atlantic? How many men and women begging for rescue, did his ship pass by, with orders not to slow to rescue? No wonder his hands trembled, no wonder he never smiled.

Recently on TV, a very excited host interviewed a photographer in Ukraine who had become a reluctant war time correspondent, thrust into the role of chronicling the war. He thought it an antiwar protest. The interviewer thought it quite a coup to have this man on air. “These shots are amazing,” he said “so graphic, so provocative, I have heard Pulitzer buzz around these photographs. You must be very happy with them. I mean, for example, do you remember where you took this shot?” (There was dead silence) “Remember? Do I remember? I remember every drop of blood.”

This photographer had borne witness. And when we bear witness to the suffering of others, we will never be the same. And here is the opportunity, if we will never be the same, perhaps that means we will be better.

What if we choose to see what others are forced to feel?

What if we had to bear witness? to it all?

What if the future of the world depended on our response...What if it does?

What if our response today at this moment determines the future of our children, of all children?

What if that is what soldiers returning form the theatre of war feel? That urgency? That responsibility?

In war and conflict man's inhumanity is laid bare... Soldiers / Peacekeepers bear witness to suffering and then to the best of their ability, make it right. This is and has been the life's work of Canadian Armed Forces members and the Peacekeepers among us today. Some are here no longer having lost their lives during conflict or after they return.

A peacekeeper once told me the true heroes do not come home, but I contend there are heroes among us. In an interview, a civilian UN aid worker in Gaza, not a religious man by any account, shocked his fellows by announcing “I must now believe in heaven.” When asked why he simply cried. “Because these children deserve more than this world will ever offer them."

Recognizing the humanity of others, a conscious decision to act, to protect and assist those whose needs are greater than our own, is something the best of us have done. Something our peacekeepers have always done.

Peace, our highest human ideal, is part of our shared humanity... almost a remembrance. Hope for peace work to achieve that peace is therefore a universal, moral obligation for us all. This is not the work of Hollow men. It is the work of peacekeepers and anyone who wishes to call themselves human. Peacekeeping with a focus on saving lives. Since peace, the cessation of hostilities, will mean relief of suffering for both sides. This peace and

hope for peace is uniquely human, more than words, more than emotion. This hope is beyond rational thinking and bends toward faith...faith in each other. Human beings cannot really be understood except in connection with this unconquerable hope for the future, for peace, for our children, for all children.

What if the future of the world depends on our response? Today, at this moment?

The world will change and we will either nurture the values of strength and courage and compassion and acceptance by our words and our actions, or not. We can bear witness to the suffering and use our power to lift ourselves and each other up. To help people regain their humanity and by so doing somehow retain our own. We can act as agents of peace in what we say, what we do, as all the people we honour today have always done.

The Peacekeepers and serving members whose lives and sacrifices we remember today, bore witness, and for some it broke their hearts. They lived and died but not before changing the lives of those around them. Not without changing our lives and lives that are to come.

"Like single drops which sparkle in the sun, they are flung far ahead of the advancing edge of the wave, they show the way and are forerunners. The world is not yet with them, so they often seem in the midst of the world's affairs preposterous. Yet they are animators of potentialities of goodness which but for them would lie forever dormant. It is not possible to be quite as mean as we naturally are, when they have gone before us."

Paraphrased from William James

We bear witness to the lives of valiant men and women, some who have gone before us,

some who stand among us and we have been changed. And herein lies the possibility - if

we have been changed perhaps we will be better.

Let us join them in the cause of peace, our highest human endeavour, together we could do so much.

Lest we forget.

Dr. Karen Ewing