Lest we forget

The new Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, this country’s official repository of the memory and meaning of our involvement in war, is a striking, angular building west of Parliament Hill on the Ottawa River. Exhibits take visitors from Canada’s earliest experiences with war up to our current mission in Afghanistan. I’d visited the museum in its previous location on an earlier trip, but having recently moved to Ottawa, I had the chance to see it again.

Photo: Peter Dueck

As a young Mennonite without any significant personal military connections, I fell into a state of interested detachment as I wandered the exhibits. The displays are attractive and informative but they didn’t, initially, move me beyond a general intellectual curiosity. Tragic deaths, even hundreds and thousands of them, have a way of becoming historical footnotes as they recede in time and space.

One exhibit, however, jarred me from my complacency.

It was a simple glass case containing German and Canadian weapons adapted for trench warfare – grenades, pistols, trench clubs, and a “butcher blade bayonet.” Dividing the weapons by nationality was a simple question on a white placard that cast the visitor as an aspiring trench combatant: “Which weapons would you choose?”

Which weapons would I choose? There was no option C: “none of the above.”

This called into question the assumptions of the remarks that introduced the exhibits. “This is your museum,” the panel read. “This is your story. This is your legacy.”

The Canadian War Museum is not a shrine to war, nor a paean to violence, nor an exercise in militaristic or nationalistic apologetics. It does not disguise the brutality of war. In fact, architect Raymond Moriyama designed the museum around a theme of regeneration.

Even so, it is not my story. It is not how I choose to remember.

My own journey began at childhood Remembrance Day ceremonies. I stood at attention, wore the poppy, and dutifully recited “In Flanders Field.” Later, for a few years, I forwarded to friends and family a somewhat cynical e-mail with a list of 101 things to do on Remembrance Day, including the suggestion to call the Department of Veterans Affairs to ask how much one gets paid to have one’s legs blown off by a grenade.

Better understanding

I progressed to a better understanding and articulation of my own position when I worked at the Mennonite Heritage Centre on an online history of conscientious objectors in Canada during the Second World War (Alternative Service). I was struck time and again by the sincerity and conviction with which the majority of conscientious objectors expressed their refusal to fight.

Pacifism, if accepted at all by young Mennonite church members today, is perhaps reflexive and almost certainly untested. I, for one, wouldn’t want to face an antagonistic judge to prove that my CO claim was genuine, as many Mennonites had to during the Second World War. The website, through photographs, audio and video clips, and written text, not only preserves the memory of Canada’s conscientious objectors, but also asks visitors to consider – or reconsider in terms of the website – what they would do if Canada again went to war.

Two years ago, my wife and I found a new way to remember. We began marking Remembrance Day by wearing white poppies instead of the usual red. The idea – not original to us – was to link the remembrance of past wars with a commitment to resisting future wars. It was our way of participating in the period of commemoration for those who fought and died while also respectfully communicating our pacifist convictions. We found that wearing a white poppy (they are easy to make out of felt and cardboard) to be a surprisingly effective conversation starter and an opportunity to talk about our Anabaptist beliefs.

As much as I love Canada and appreciate the opportunities I’ve had as its citizen, I consciously try to distance myself from an enthusiastic nationalism, even in its most innocuous forms. It’s entirely appropriate, then, that little windows at the top of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa spell out “Lest we forget” in Morse code.

It’s a curious phrase, for while it urges us to remember, it also acknowledges the human tendency to forget. As a Mennonite, my visit to the War Museum was also about remembering not to forget. Not to forget, and be thankful for, a peaceful country. And not to forget past generations of Mennonites and their adherence to a biblical pacifism.

Peter Dueck is a member of Jubilee Mennonite Church, Winnipeg. He and his wife Christa recently completed a year with Mennonite Voluntary Service in Baltimore, and are now working and studying in Ottawa.