QUARANTINE BLOG # 514

August 26, 2021

For the last several issues we’ve been looking at monuments dedicated to American heroes.  Today we go north of the border to visit heroes Canada has honored.

The Defence of Hong Kong Memorial Wall honors Canadians who defended Hong Kong during the Second World War.  In 1941, almost 2,000 Canadians reinforced the Hong Kong outpost and fought against overwhelming odds.  The granite monument, inspired by the mountains of Hong Kong, is etched with the names of all Canadians who fought there.  On one side are the names of the 961 members of the Royal Rifles, and on the other side are the names of 911 Winnipeg Grenadiers.  The 106 members of brigade headquarters, including doctors, dentists and chaplains, are listed on either end of the Memorial.  One dog, Gander, is also included as he died while saving his comrades by catching a grenade.

The Monument to Canadian Fallen (Korean War Monument), commemorates more than 30,000 Canadians who served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953, and as peacekeepers in Korea until 1957.  Inscribed on the monument are the names of 516 Canadians who gave their lives for freedom and peace.  The monument depicts a Canadian volunteer soldier and two Korean children.  The girl is holding a bouquet of maple leaves and the boy is holding a bouquet of maple leaves and Roses of Sharon, Korea’s national flower.  An identical monument stands in the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan, Korea, where 378 Canadians are buried.

The National Holocaust Monument was established to ensure a permanent, national symbol that will honor the victims of the Holocaust and recognize Canadian survivors.  The Monument honors the millions of innocent men, women and children who were murdered under the Nazi regime and recognizes those survivors who were able to eventually make Canada their home. 

The Monument features six triangular concrete segments that create the points of a star.  The star is the visual symbol of the Holocaust – a symbol that millions of Jews were forced to wear by the Nazi’s to identify them as Jews, exclude them from humanity and mark them for extermination.  The triangular spaces are representative of the badges the Nazi’s and their collaborators used to label homosexuals, Roma-Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses and political and religious prisoners for murder.

The Department of Canadian Heritage produced a video of the Monument.

Painted on one of the stars: a barbed-wire fence of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi killing centers. 

Painted on one of the stars: an abandoned rail bed in Treblinka that was used to transport Jews to the killing center.

Tomorrow: Maurice Richard, Terry Fox, and the Famous Five.

👉  The people associated with 117 Shenandoah Drive in Loch Lynn, Maryland are afflicted with an insidious condition.  It is called collecting.  It hasn’t reached the stage of hoarding, but we must be careful.

Mom and Dad (a.k.a. Skinny Granny and Skinny Pappy) started it.  They started collecting Depression Glass because it was cheap and pretty.  After a while they had 3,000 pieces.  Then it was glass baskets, and dolls of all kinds, and Beanie Babies, and cookie cutters, and Carnival glass, and miniature furniture, and ... well you can see what I mean.  And their offspring, and their offsprings’ offspring have jumped right in there.  We’ve had stamps and baseball cards and Boy Scout patches.  One offspring and his wife had an antique shop called “The Attic’s Full.”  Here at 233 it’s yarn and Legos.  And books.

Well, what got this rambling remembrance started was a story I read about Yvette Dardenne, an 83 year old woman from Belgium who has accumulated almost 60,000 vintage tin boxes from all over the world since starting her collection some 30 years ago.  

The colorful boxes piled used to contain goods ranging from chocolates, toffees, coffee and rice to tobacco, talc and shoe polish, and come from diverse places like India.  The collection, which now occupies four houses, all began with a Cote d’Or chocolate box illustrated with a painting of a blonde girl in a blue hat.

One reader of this blog collects sea glass and makes jewelry.  Another gathers in Charlie Brown and Peanuts collectibles.  And another has a room full of sports entertainment figures and baseball collectibles.

Well, I guess it’s “Whatever Floats Your Boat” (and I know this will disqualify me from being the new host of “Jeopardy!” but some of the folk in that video should put on more clothes).

👉  The wisdom of “Pluggers” before we close:

👉  Today’s close is from Praying with the Psalms, by Eugene H. Peterson.

Where can I go from your spirit?  Or where can I flee from your presence? (Psalm 139:7)

God cannot be avoided.  We do not escape him by staying away from church or running away from home.  We do not put distance between him and us by retreating to the mountains or adventuring across the seas.  Always and everywhere, he is the one with whom we have to do.

Prayer: God, when I am lonely, I want you to be close to me but feel you are far away; when I am guilty, I want you to be far away but can’t escape the sense of your presence.  My feelings, I know, have little to do with the reality of your presence.  Thank you for being with me to bless and not condemn, to comfort and not accuse, even in Jesus Christ.  Amen.

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