ramble through the bronx
yes, this here is ramble through the bronx, the continuing musings of a graduate student* who should be writing her dissertation, but honestly, living in new york city there's really so much else to do...* and her commenting friends. And guest blogger.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Happy Remembrance Day
Since I'm not going to hear it around here, and it's tradition, I'm posting Flanders Fields --
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
--
Other Canadians will remember reciting this poem every November 11, and also that it is on our new $10 bill (not the $5, which has the hockey & the paragraph from The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier).
--
This was scary though-- I looked up "Flanders Fields" on google, and the first site that came up called itself a Canadian site about "Rememberance" [sic] day, but turned out to be a xenophobic anti-immigration site (at http://www.freedomsite.org/cfirc/our_heritage/rememberance_day/ -- I don't want to link to them; I don't want to encourage them) talking about Canadian "heroes" and the immigrant menace. The titles of the sections of the site are things like "| The Case Against Immigration | Immigration: Canada's Silent Health Threat | Immigration and Crime | Chinese Illegals - Full Coverage | Canadian Immigration Hotline | Our Heroes, Our History, Our Heritage | Government WATCH | Audio and Video Files | Canada is Changing | What the Polls Say? | Immigration in other countries |" The final image on the site has the slogan: "Made with European Culture -- Accept no substitute".
What's scary is not so much that the site exists -- that's fine, it has the right to -- but that it's the first site listed by Google. This means that people are *linking* to the site and referring to it. It doesn't even give the words to McCrae's poem!
So weird. So un-Canadian. Very creepy.
jane 1:32 PM [+]
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