Seventy-five years ago today, a little-known Canadian colonel — a half-blind veteran of the First World War — sat pen in hand before a dark cloth-covered table on the quarterdeck of the American battleship U.S.S. Missouri.
Allied warships had assembled in a long, grey line in the stifling heat of Tokyo Bay — a mute audience for the moment the victors met the vanquished.
Along with a host of military glitterati that included U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Col. Lawrence Cosgrave accepted the surrender of the Japanese empire on Canada’s behalf. He signed on the wrong line, causing a minor kerfuffle that was soon rectified by MacArthur’s chief of staff with a stroke of his own pen.
The Second World War ended at that moment.
A copy of the Sept. 2, 1945 Japanese surrender document, displayed aboard the USS Missouri historical site at Pearl Harbor, Oahu. ( Murray Brewster/CBC News)
The most deadly and destructive conflict in human history — a war that killed at least 75 million people worldwide, claimed 45,000 Canadian lives and left another 55,000 Canadians physically and mentally scarred — was finally over.
Once the shooting stopped, said historian Tim Cook, war-weary Canadians were eager to forget the war — or at least to move on from it. Few people know, and even fewer appreciate, the somewhat droll role Cosgrove played in that great moment three-quarters of a century ago.
That act of collective forgetting bothers Cook. It’s reflected in the title of his latest book: The Fight for History: 75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering and Remaking Canada’s Second World War.
One of the book’s working titles was “The Deafening Silence.”
“It’s not easy to talk about our history,” Cook told CBC News. “History often divides us.”
Cook — one of the country’s leading military historians and authors — said he’s baffled by Canadians’ apparent reluctance to come to grips with the war’s legacy.
Historian Tim Cook: “History often divides us.” (CBC News)
Following the First World War, Canadians built monuments from coast to coast. Canadian soldiers who served in that war — Cosgrave among them — wrote sometimes eloquent and moving accounts of their experiences under fire.
That didn’t happen in Canada following the Japanese and German surrenders in 1945, said Cook.
“We didn’t write the same history books. We didn’t produce films or television series,” he said. “We allowed the Americans and the British and even the Germans to write about the war and to present it on film.”
Some Canadian war correspondents wrote books in the immediate aftermath of the victory, hoping to speak to history — but senior military commanders and leaders subsequently shied away.
Unlike the American and British generals who wrote Second World War memoirs (Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton and Bernard Montgomery), Canadian commanders Harry Crerar, Andrew McNaughton, George Pearkes and Guy Simmonds all chose to remain silent and allowed biographers to tell their stories — sometimes decades after the fact.
Cook said the reluctance of many returning Canadian soldiers to discuss the war beyond the tight circles of Royal Canadian Legion halls — a silence that persisted for decades — also contributed to Canadians’ lack of engagement with the country’s experiences in the Second World War.
The ‘comfortable’ image of Canada the peacekeeper
The advent of peacekeeping has also tainted Canada’s view of the conflict, he said.
While some critics have argued successive governments have exploited the peacekeeping mythology, Cook said he’s very proud of Canada’s peacekeeping legacy. But peacekeeping “became a very comfortable symbol for us,” he said. “I argue in the book that it too has contributed to the silencing of the Second World War.”
In the 1960s, Cook said, Remembrance Day ceremonies in Canada suffered from dwindling attendance. It was only in the 1980s and 1990s — when the war was being re-examined through American popular culture properties likethe hit movie Saving Private Ryan — that a deeper appreciation began to take root, he said.
Cook argues that revival of interest happened almost too late — at a time when many veterans had already passed away and few living Canadians remembered the war as a personal experience.
“We shouldn’t expect the Americans or the British and the Germans and the Japanese to talk about the war” in the same way Canadians experienced it, he said.
“If you don’t tell your own story, no one else will.”
History can be “dangerous” for politicians, Cook argues, because of the divisions it leaves behind (the conscription crisis of 1944 damaged English-French relations in Canada) and the effect of its darker chapters — such as the internment of Japanese citizens — when they come to light.
Many of the international institutions that were born out of the Second World War are under attack today. That’s just one reason why remembering the war is so important, said Cook.
“I’m not suggesting we should write heroic history and that we need to chest-thump and stand behind the flag. But I do think we need to tell our stories.”
The American battleship USS Missouri hosted the Japanese surrender ceremony on Sept. 2, 1945. It is now a museum in Oahu, Hawaii. ( Murray Brewster/CBC News)
MONTREAL – One expert says entry-level pay under the tentative deal between Air Canada and its pilots could be a stumbling block ahead of a union vote on the agreement.
Under their current contract, pilots earn far less in their first four years at the company before enjoying a big wage increase starting in year five.
The Air Line Pilots Association had been pushing to scrap the so-called “fixed rate” provision entirely.
But according to a copy of the contract summary obtained by The Canadian Press, the proposed deal announced Sunday would merely cut the four-year period of lower pay to two years.
John Gradek, who teaches aviation management at McGill University, says as many as 2,000 of Air Canada’s roughly 5,200 active pilots may earn entry-level wages following a recent hiring surge.
After the airline averted a strike this week, Gradek says the failure to ditch the pay grade restrictions could prompt pushback from rank-and-file flight crew and jeopardize the deal, which is up for a vote next month.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
ROME (AP) — Salvatore “Totò” Schillaci, the Italy striker who was top scorer at its home World Cup in 1990, has died. He was 59.
Schillaci had been hospitalized in Palermo following treatment for colon cancer.
The Palermo Civico hospital said in a statement that Schillacci died on Wednesday morning after being admitted 11 days ago.
Schillaci scored six goals for Italy during the 1990 World Cup. He came on as a substitute during Italy’s opener against Austria, scored in a 1-0 victory, and went on to earn the Golden Boot awarded to the tournament’s top scorer. He only scored one other goal for Italy in his career.
Italian soccer federation president Gabriele Gravina announced that a minute of silence would be held in memory of Schillaci before all games in the country for the rest of the week.
“The uncontrollable celebrations, in which his face was the symbol of shared joy, will remain forever part of Italian soccer (history),” Gravina said. “Totò was a great player, a symbol of tenacious desire and redemption. … His soccer was full of passion. And that fearless spirit made everyone appreciate him and will make him immortal.”
Schillaci also won the Golden Ball award at the 1990 World Cup as the tournament’s top player ahead of Lothar Matthaus and Diego Maradona.
Schillaci played for Messina, Juventus, Inter Milan and Japanese team Jubilo Iwata during his club career.
“You made an entire nation dream during the Magical Nights of Italia ’90,” Inter said on its social media channels.
West Germany won the 1990 World Cup, beating Argentina in the final, while Italy beat England for third place with a winning penalty kick from Schillaci.
Roberto Baggio, who scored Italy’s opening goal in the third-place match, wrote on Instagram, “Ciao my dear friend.”
Having been born and raised in Palermo, the Palermo soccer team announced that it would hold a public viewing of Schillaci at its Renzo Barbera stadium ahead of the funeral, the Gazzetta dello Sport reported.
French soccer player Wissam Ben Yedder will stay free ahead of his trial on charges of sexual assault while intoxicated, one of his lawyers told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Marie Roumiantseva said Ben Yedder will remain under strict judicial supervision after a woman filed a lawsuit for sexual assault earlier this month.
The 34-year-old Ben Yedder, a prolific striker in the French league, was briefly detained then released after the alleged incident in his car on the French Riviera. Ben Yedder had been stopped by police after he first refused to do so. He was then put in a jail cell.
After he was summoned to appear in court on Oct. 15 and placed under judicial supervision, the Nice prosecutor’s office appealed the decision not to remand the player in custody. The investigative chamber of the Court of Appeal of Aix-en-Provence did not grant this request and kept Ben Yedder under judicial supervision.
Ben Yedder attended a hearing Tuesday during which he offered to go to rehab. He has admitted he drove while under the influence of alcohol but has denied any sexual assault.
In a separate legal case last year, Ben Yedder was charged with “rape, attempted rape and sexual assault” over another alleged incident in the south of France.
Ben Yedder has been without a club since his contract with Monaco expired at the end of last season.
