Liberate Europe? Defeat Hitler? No thanks, younger Canadians say
May 05, 2010
OTTAWA?The results of a new poll timed to the 65th anniversary of VE Day has the Historica-Dominion Institute suggesting there is increasing reverence for Canada's Second World War Veterans but a troubling ambivalence about following their example.
A clear majority of younger Canadians say they would not have volunteered in 1939 to help liberate Europe and defeat Nazism, according to the poll.
The survey, provided exclusively to The Canadian Press, shows a significant divide between older Canadians and those aged 18 to 35 when it comes to assessing Victory in Europe Day, 65 years after the end of the most significant human conflagration of the past century.
The poll, which comes as Prime Minister Stephen Harper attends a ceremony Thursday celebrating the liberation of Holland at a cemetery near the Netherlands-Belgium border, is in some ways paradoxical.
?You have on one hand praising (and) honouring the veterans ? which we didn't do for many years,? Andrew Cohen, the president of the Historica-Dominion Institute, said in an interview.
?And then we ask the question: 'But if you were in similar circumstances, would you go?' Well, yeah, there is a high number generally of Canadians, but the younger you get, the more persuaded they have to be.?
Over three quarters of 1,025 respondents in the Ipsos-Reid online panel agreed that ?the men and women who served in the Second World War deserve to be called 'the Greatest Generation,'? a term famously bestowed on their American counterparts by broadcaster Tom Brokaw.
More than 94 per cent of respondents said Canada's war veterans deserve to be called heroes.
The association that oversees polling in Canada has taken the position that online polls can't have a margin of error because of they are not random.
A clear majority, 58 per cent, said they would sign up to serve (including 23 per cent who responded ?definitely yes? and 35 per cent ?probably yes) if it were 1939 and they were 20 years old. But that total was skewed upward by older respondents.
?If you're between 18 and 35 ? who are the people who would do the fighting, after all ? four in 10 said they'd sign up to serve,? said Cohen.
Between 1939 and 1945, more than a million Canadians and Newfoundlanders served in the Second World War out of a Canadian population of between 11 and 12 million citizens.
The annual celebration in Holland, among other European countries, still elicits deeply moving expressions of thanks for Canada's critical military contribution.
Cohen would like to better understand why 60 per cent of adult Canadians below age 35 say they'd reject serving.
?Do they know enough?? he says of a conflict whose lasting scar on humanity remains the Holocaust. ?Do they know what this conflict was all about? Having learned what we think they should know, do they still believe that??
Although Canadian history is poorly taught in at least six provinces, according to Historica-Dominion Institute research, the Second World War does get widely covered through other courses on the high school curriculum.
And Cohen notes that a number of TV series have aired on the Second World War, including the highly acclaimed Band of Brothers, plus immensely popular movies such as Saving Private Ryan.
?It would be easy for me to say it's all about ignorance, but if they're not getting it in school, World War Two is a pretty popular subject of Hollywood, or video games, or comic books, or novels, or popular history,? said Cohen.
He doesn't know how the poll response would translate into real recruitment if the situation today really did parallel 1939: ?It may well be that far more than 40 per cent would sign up. But it did give me pause.?
The survey also found that 50 per cent of respondents knew that this Saturday, May 8, marks the 65th anniversary of VE Day, but that just one in 10 believe VE Day is Canada's ?most significant event? of the Second World War. A majority, 54 per cent, chose the D-Day invasion of Normandy as the most significant, while 14 per cent picked the Battle of Dieppe and 13 per cent chose the liberation of Holland.
Apart from the age divisions in the survey, there were also regional disparities. Quebec remains distinct from the rest of Canada on questions about the Second World War.
Cohen notes that only 56 per cent of Quebec respondents said they would feel shame if Canada had not participated in the war, compared to more than three quarters elsewhere in the country.
?That's not a lot,? Cohen says of the Quebec figure.
?There were real divisions in Canada in the 1940s, we had a conscription crisis because of it. And today I think Quebec has always been wary or skeptical of the Afghan mission. They're skeptical of the last war, which has been over (for) 65 years!?
The Historica-Dominion Institute continues its work in promoting knowledge of Canadian history, and has undertaken an oral history project with researchers combing Canada to interview all consenting survivors of the Second World War. The institute plans to publish a book in November of the stories it gleans.
?We're trying to capture those memories in a digital way so they're accessible to this generation and to the next one,? said Cohen.
?We try to wave this flag and remind Canadians they had a past and that people went off into this killing field. Some came back and some didn't. Sixty-five years later, we hope you'll remember and hope you honour their contribution.?
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/804923--liberate-europe-defeat-hitler-no-thanks-younger-canadians-say
