http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...s&section=news

What do you think of that?

I think it was a bizarre suggestion in the first place to have such a monument.

Why?? They acted for their beliefs ... what's wrong with that?

It's not acting for one's beliefs that I find strange but the proposal that there should be a memorial, apparently using public money, to celebrate draft-dodgers - people who broke the law in a friendly neighbouring country.

A lot of them settled in the area ... I assume they can't go back to the US ... I guess they want to be remembered.

The US is a strange country ... elects someone who dodges the draft by joining the national guard and not actually serving, and then castigates others for trying to achieve the same result but without the benefit of the power & influence that some others had.

So why should Canada be so concerned about US feelings ... concern for French & German feelings didn't stop the UK commerorating VE day.

Fair points...
Also, didn't help bush didn't really win the election either...

They can go back now - there's an amnesty, according to the article. I imagine that plenty would not wish to do so, though.

VE day is completely different - it celebrates a victory in history, rather than people who ran away from doing their duty to their country. I'd think the French would be quite keen to celebrate it, given they were occupied by the Nazis.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...21#post1441760

I enjoyed that.

I don't believe the US was ever under any threat of being invaded by North Vietnam ... it was a "political" war and there shouldn't have been a draft.

If you had an eighteen year old son, would you be happy for him to be drafted to fight in Iraq right now??

How would you feel if you had been drafted at 18 and sent to some foreign hell hole to die?

Given the way they're sucking up to the Germans right now, I doubt it very much. I didn't notice a British presence at the celebration of the liberation of Paris ... I gather DeGaul (who didn't want the UK in the EU when it was first set up) pretty much rewrote history to make it look like a purely French victory.

I know CalgaryAMC is younger than me, I guess you are ... both my parents were teenagers in WW2 ... my dad served with the RN in the Med, my mum was too young to serve, but told me stories about what my grandfather saw as a firewatcher in the docks in Glasgow ... family men rushing to attack what they thought were enemy parachutists, realising too late that it was actually a mine attached to the bottom of the parachute.

Drafting unwilling combatants should only happen when your home soil is at risk ... I deeply sympathise with everybody who has lost sons & daughters in Iraq ... but when it comes down to it, they were volunteers ... these aren't wars for draftees.

I'm happy to drop this subject now if you want to agree to disagree.

I am sympathetic to the draft dodgers. And Canada has a long history of taking in victims (for want of a better word) of America's problems - starting I suppose with the United Empire Loyalists, and then there was the underground railroad, and even draft dodgers.

Should Nelson have made a memorial? That's up to them; I have no feelings either way on it.