Another death to Canada: the public cemetery? (From our Generals to the specific)

Stephen Harper, when in Opposition, thought he was the Australian Prime Minister, leading the country to war. Michael Ignatieff, when in America, thought of himself as of that nation, and helped lead that country to war, not unlike a "cerebral praetorian guard," as it was said. He also wrote of “true patriot love” but for years sounded like Henry James, Sr., who once explained: “I am a good patriot, but my patriotism is even livelier on the other side of the water.” Before the Vancouver Olympics began, Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke of undying patriotism before members of the B.C. Legislature but prevented himself from doing so before ALL of Canada, because he had incidentally prorogued Ottawa’s parliament. Canadians revelled in the Olympics but conveniently forgot the fact they had no representation.

Meanwhile, in the current-day backwaters of Port Coquitlam (B.C.), Mayor Greg Moore tells us he is proud to be Canadian, standing aside pictures of Terry Fox, with mother Betty Fox. Yet he wants to let Rogers put a 50 metre cell tower at the very cemetery where Terry Fox is buried. The city ratepayers will each save $1.34 per year, forgetting their debt to Terry Fox, and our Canadian inheritance, which cannot be calculated. The act of selling out on Terry is somewhat akin to letting the Hudson’s Bay Company go out of Canadian hands, which no other country except Canada would allow. The dead in the cemetery are now considered by city officials to be mere deposits in the ground, apparently leaving no memories of significance, individual, collective, public, national – or even international. The city feels free to do as it pleases, without public debate, because predecessors have simply left the scene – they are considered gone, no longer existing - as if there are no traces left. (See also Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 2006). The city forgets that memories live and some are even larger than life. May I ask: what part of the word “disrespect” do they not understand?

What is a city that pollutes public space for the commemoration of the past? The answer is that it is not a city but an aesthetic junkyard. The result is that we feel rootless, lost, without tradition - we don’t know where we belong, and this is a big problem for all Canadians, as I suggest. Port Coquitlam is fracturing the collective memory of its incredible past, and the people who visit cemeteries (I might add) are already fractured, which is how feckless faces from Rogers prey. Likely, it is the result of the “free-market” mantra: we must now allow “competition” for space in cemeteries as individuals bow to corporate interests. At any rate the impending death of the municipal cemetery in Canada borders on the ethically criminal, and in Port Coquitlam’s case: the completely insane.