Citizens' Vimy Ridge

Today is Pat Stogran's last day. To officials at Veteran Affairs Canada the ombudsman was a thorn in the side that just wouldn't quit agitating. To veterans themselves, and their supporters, he was a true, bona fide hero, taking on a system that seemed insensitive and incapable of adapting to the new type of veteran that has emerged from Afghanistan and was different in challenges from the older veteran of World War Two and Korea. It's hard to read how Canadians themselves feel about Stogran. It's not that they are for or against him. Sadly, they just seem ambivalent - a source of deepening frustration to Stogran himself. The reality that his final day occurs just hours prior to Remembrance Day is poignantly tragic.Regardless of the view, Pat Stogran was just the type of advocate the veterans required. Things are changing in the veteran world, and quickly. With First World War veterans now gone, and the heroes of World War Two and Korea rapidly disappearing off the scene, things increasingly come down to the veterans of Afghanistan. That is hardly enough of a force to prompt the needed changes at Veteran Affairs Canada. The other conflicts saw us throw hundreds of thousands of men into conflict, and far too many of them failed to return home at all. Compared to those numbers, Afghanistan hardly seems to register.But there's another dynamic at play as well, and it's time we faced up to it.  The Greatest Generation, as Tom Brokaw has called them, endured two traumatic experiences that shaped their outlook on life and provided them with the insights and skills to greatly enhance Canada itself. The Depression defined them. Doing without so much in the 1930s not only taught them the value of saving, but also prompted them to demand subsequent governments invest in ways that rounded off the rougher edges of social dislocation and poverty. When that was followed almost immediately by the challenge posed by Adolf Hitler and the Japanese threat, the millions of citizens living in that time were forged into a kind of battle-hardened generation that ultimately prompted them to form a social and economic compact.But underneath all of it was the sacrifice an entire citizenry made, to first overcome the challenges of economic destitution, and then the challenge of fascism. Each one of them gave something to the great efforts. Rationing, sharing resources gratis, enlistment, and even shedding blood, became the defining characteristic of the age. And so it was that when veterans returned to our shores, the found a ready and willing people to embrace them that believed in the validity of the war effort and their own part in its ultimate victory.As that generation is passing off all too quickly, it is being replaced by a people who, other than the families of our troops, were required to give very little to the effort and who never really comprehended the conflict anyway. It wasn't black or white, and, in truth, it wasn't really gray either: it just didn't enter into our daily consciousness, except when the body bags were returned to Canada. We were never asked, as in the days of political Camelot, to ask what we could do for our country, instead of the other way around. As our remarkable men and women slugged it out in Afghanistan, citizens back home were demanding more and more from their governments. It was like some great dislocation between the citizens and their warriors and defenders, and in the process our troops became peripheral at the same time as our patriotic spirit waned.It is to this context that our veterans return. A public apathetic about an overseas conflict inevitably results in a government apathetic about its troops. It was never intended that way, of course, but when little citizen pressure was brought to bear on the powers that be in the federal government, its leaders proceeded to overlook their duty in the pursuit of more domestic and retail politics.While the rest of us - government, citizens and bureaucratic decision makers - lost ourselves in the confusion of the war and our duty to its warriors, Pat Stogran blistered his way on to the airwaves in hearty defense of the men and women our declining patriotism seemed to have forgotten. Let's be truthful. This is a slam-dunk - ask any Canadian and they will voice that our veterans deserve the best. The trouble is, we're actually not much engaged in the drama.And so the veterans fight for their benefits and their natural rights, wondering why a nation that says it respects them nevertheless won't supply for them. Citizens have Vimy Ridges too, and this is one of them. We either sacrifice now for these brave soldiers or we come back down the hill in defeat. Regardless of the outcome, the veterans found one champion that dared to tackle the system that had created a demand for incredible sacrifice on battlefields far away and yet couldn't seem to find the funds to pay for their medical treatments when they came home. Stogran exposed our hypocrisy, and for that, sir, on this your last day, we can only say "thank you."