My thoughts and feelings about the military-industrial multiplex were fused in the furnace of punk rock fed by the quiet fire of family veterans from both world wars, an understanding of history, powerful films, books, songs, and the poets of Ireland.
I am under no illusion about the glory of combat, my physical prowess, or sanity in crazy times.
We should look up to the logic and determination of the Canadian Armed Forces. It would be much better for our country if citizens were fitter, smarter, more familiar with weapons, military strategies, first aid, communicating and operating like a unified team under possible humanitarian crises in the future.
These days this Sudbury boy tries to live with a smile and kindness in our nation's capital that's less than an hour's drive from the border of a massive army with the deepest pockets on the planet. A force whose commander-in-chief has said, to at least two witnesses, he wants the kind of generals in 2025 that (German Chancellor Adolf) Hitler had as his loyalists during the Second World War (per The Atlantic) to dismantle the architecture of modern democracy with confidence while issuing threats to conquer the true north strong and free, which is why I am now calling for the immediate restoration of Canada's Civil Defense Corps that closed down with the Cold War.
I am joining other voices of this land, like Peter MacLeod in The Tyee, seeking a domestic response to dangers that, for many people, become clearer and closer with each passing day. I have asked my local federal MP as well as other politicians in every party about reviving this national training program ASAP, while trying to raise awareness for the necessity of a new civil defence corps.
This week, you too could press for a new CDC as this weathered but not quite finished GenXer who will neither push for armed conflict nor willingly stand aside if Millennials and Generation Z are called upon to fight an oncoming oligarch war that's hell-bent on reshaping a world my nephews just beginning kindergarten will graduate into.
Better an old man never dance again than a young one. Elbows up.
Mark Kirkwood Callingham
Ottawa