Wow ! You are on a roll, Lady !
Posted by Anonymous to Our Town and Its Business at 16 October 2015 at 18:52
**********************************************
My finger hovered over the wrong line again. The above comment now heads this post. I appreciate the sentiment but I need to know y'all understood the information.
Or was the history so tortuous you just gave up trying to follow the thread ?
It's entirely possible . Municipal business does not enjoy high ratings.
In politics, things happen that way. There's much to think about but foremost is the need to look like you know what you're talking about. Not to make a fool of yourself.
Most elected representatives have good intentions but when they look around and the leader isn't leading, they start to question themselves. I've watched it up close and personal over and over.
We have the finest war memorial anywhere in Ontario. Perhaps even in Canada. Aurora, King and Whitchurch were communities numbering hundreds when the memorial was planned. They worked together. planned and raised the funds. They chose the site for prominence. It took years but when completed, it was everything the community intended.
A fitting tribute...prominent . ..surrounded by green fields.... a beacon of light.... and a symbol of everything good and honorable in a small Canadian Town that rallied to the call of duty .
When the town started to close in around it, development plans were required to be least intrusive .
The Cenotaph has always been immaculate and lovingly tended. Until the mid-nineties representatives of King ,Whitchurch and Aurora were the Foundation responsible for its care and maintenance.
Then Aurora accepted the honour and responsibility.
In or around 1972 , a tank became available for free. Queen's York Rangers had become a Tank Regiment and some bright spark from that organization suggested it would be neat to have one. Where else to put it but the War Memorial. Ever obliging, the Council of the Day were inclined to accommodate. One Councillor thought it would be nice for kids to play on.
The Royal Canadian Legion still had its original function. There were still Members with experience of war and and significance of the Memorial.,
Being inside a fighter bomber, a submarine or a tank is to experience the full horror of machines with no other purpose but the death and destruction of mankind.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be less appropriate in a memorial set aside to remember always
men whose lives were taken by those monstrous weapons.
So the tank was never accepted .
That no member of Aurora Council had a question about the suggestion of placing another weapon of war at the Cenotaph speaks volumes.
A $15,000 concrete pad is to be constructed to accommodate the monstrosity.
When we gather there in November with Officials from three municipalities, and children and Honour Guards, and remaining veterans,maybe release a flight of doves, to lay wreaths, listen again to the Last Post and bow our heads for a full minute of silence,
WE SHALL REMEMBER.....
The scene this year will be dominated by an ugly replica of a war machine, cobbled together from spare parts perched on a dais of massive concrete, a crass and totally inappropriate symbol in opposition to everything the ceremony represents.
Shame ....Shame ... on every shallow and unthinking person responsible who gave no thought to the values of the town they represent.
There may be time to stop this abomination. It's as close as your phone ...your iPad ...your elected representative, your Mayor.
ReplyDeleteMemorials
Humans have erected memorials for thousands of years. The subjects have been individuals, groups, tens of thousands or even millions who have fought and perished, or who have fought, survived and came through victorious.
Penicillin and polio vaccine are the subjects of memorials, technologies, religions and those who practiced these, with varying effects of good and evil. The latter is before us this very day.
Great men and women have been memorialized, even dogs and cats. Great battles are the subject of statues, such as the Siege of Stalingrad that saw the invincible German army rendered psychologically vanquished, never to really overcome the defeat it had suffered. Almost two million people were consumed in this massive struggle.
For me the memorial that stands out, both for its construction and for the man it honours, is the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Built of Indiana limestone and two types of marble, it is at once large and magnificent while being simple and elegant. Above the figure of Lincoln are inscribed the words: "In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever."
What is important is that every memorial, however large or small, be remembered with grace and dignity, so that it shall outshine the small minds that would treat it with disrespect.
Whatever were they thinking ?
ReplyDeleteI am seriously concerned about our Council. Just when you think they are getting their act together, something like this comes along to smack you in the face.
Good Luck with the Insurance if they stick that thing in there. It won't be just little kids that try to climb allover it & get
ReplyDeletetheir cell-phone photos. What a stupid idea ! Right up there with the Heritage Centre.
There was a huge fuss because someone, [ it might even have been a person with a military background ] dared to walk
ReplyDeletehis pooch in there. Since then no dogs are allowed - ever. That space is not available for anything but respect.
ReplyDeleteReference is made in this week's Auroran to "ground will be broken on two fronts to transform this place of commemoration and contemplation for generations to come."
I think the place should be left in peace. We don't need 700 tulip bulbs when the Dutch royal family has for generations given to Canada 100,000 tulip bulbs annually in perpetual thanks for our country having given sanctuary to the Dutch queen and her family. Go to Ottawa and view this floral thank you.
The Department of National Defence has announced that up to 250 decommissioned light armoured vehicles will be made available to Canadian communities for placement in prominent places to acknowledge the service and sacrifice of Canadian troops serving in Afghanistan. T'would be more meaningful if some of the wounded survivors were to receive proper medical care and financial assistance.
So Aurora is going to become one of 250 Canadian communities to display a decommissioned LAV. I say a pox on this.
Let's leave our "place of commemoration and contemplation" just as it is, and keep the $15,000 in the piggy bank until the next hair-brained scheme comes along.
I'm ok with the tulips, not with the sculpture that results from the welding shop.
ReplyDeleteBut there is time to get it stopped unless the momentum of a self-approving council prove to be too much.
Once something is presented as being a way of " honouring veterans ", it has been decided.
Wow. Who thinks of these ideas? And for our council to even give this the time of day at the council table! Sad and disgraceful.
ReplyDeleteI sent this message to all councillors a few days ago:
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry that I did not notice that the question of placing a Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) in the Peace Park was to come up at your last General Committee meeting, or I would have sent off this message much earlier.
The placement of an armoured vehicle in a Peace Park seems ironic, to say the least. When these parks were first designated in 1992 they were to be "Places for Peace" (to read more about them see the Peace Parks across Canada web page at http://www.iipt.org/newsletter/2007/images/PeaceParksProject.pdf ).
These vehicles are not just armoured, they are armed. They bear weapons which are there to kill people, even if only in self-defence. Do we want to commemorate the sad fact that such vehicles are needed, that we have not found a way to avoid war?
Put the LAV next to the old drill shed or armoury, if need be, although I believe this or a similar proposal was successfully opposed by neighbourhood residents some years ago.
Please reconsider placing such a strong symbol of war and of the violence of death in war in the Peace Park, near the cenotaph which is all about remembering with regret all the local lives lost to war.
But bring on the tulips!
"Put the LAV next to the old drill shed or armoury,..."
ReplyDelete...or out front of the new QYR home (some of whose members served in Afghanistan), or maybe the Legion?