|
Thank You, Americans!
Town at war over 'peace monument'
B.C. town reels after proposal to fete draft dodgers airs on Fox
Brian Hutchinson
National Post
September 27, 2004
CREDIT: Ian Lindsay, CanWest News Service
Commemorating draft dodgers in Nelson, B.C., has angered the local Legion hall, and a lot of potential tourists from the United States.
NELSON, B.C. - 'I bet I know why you want to come here,'' said the woman at the hotel, when I called to make my reservation.
Denial was futile. The crew from Fox News had just blazed through town, igniting a controversy and setting everyone on edge.
Fox News producers learned of a local plan, hatched this month, to celebrate and memorialize thousands of U.S. draft dodgers and war objectors who ran to Canada during the war in Vietnam. Dozens are said to have settled here, in this bucolic, mountainside community 700 kilometres east of Vancouver.
The Fox crew arrived last week, and its story was broadcast internationally.
Nelson's city hall was immediately flooded with angry phone calls, e-mails and letters, most of them from furious Americans vowing never to set foot here again.
The dodgy celebration is the brainchild of a small group with an excruciatingly long name, and an equally cumbersome acronym: the Reunion Committee to Reunite War Resisters and Those Who Assisted Them during the Vietnam War, or RCRWRTWATDVW.
Leading the group is Isaac Romano, a local child therapist who moved here from Seattle five years ago. He envisions a ''spectacular'' weekend of discussion, and the premiere of a feature- length documentary about American war objectors in Canada.
What really seemed to rankle Fox viewers, however, is RCRWRTWATDVW's plan to unveil a metal sculpture meant to honour male and female war objectors, and Canada's role in welcoming them from the U.S. The work will depict a trio of people holding hands.
''If you think a monument to yellow belly cowards is going to somehow give a sense of respectfulness to these shameful Americans, who turned their backs on their country, you are sadly mistaken,'' one angry American wrote in an e-mail to city hall. ''I for one will never visit your town and spend a thin dime ever again, if this thing is built.''
That was among the milder comments the city received.
On Saturday, CanWest reported that the largest combat veterans' group in the U.S. has asked President George W. Bush to voice its displeasure over the proposed statue to the Canadian government.
This has not gone over well with local business owners. A must-stop on the global counter-culture circuit, Nelson is filled with artists, spiritual seekers and dreadlocked drifters. But it owes much of its current prosperity to tourism, and to the American dollars it attracts.
Under most circumstances, the proposed celebration to salute U.S. draft dodgers would have received scant notice. It's not even supposed to take place for another two years. But it was well enough received at a press conference here, staged by RCRWRTWATDVW.
The city's Mayor appeared delighted. ''I think it's the right place for it,'' David Elliot told the Nelson Daily News, after the press conference. ''We have a lot of open-minded people in this area and certainly people who are conscious of the efforts that happened in the Vietnam War.''
Then Fox News arrived, and all hell broke loose. Mayor Elliot sounded shell-shocked this weekend, when I called on him at home.
''I made an innocent comment, off the cuff,'' he explained. ''Yes, I am a peace activist. But I wasn't speaking as mayor when I said I liked the idea. I wasn't even talking about the sculpture, which I don't support. We don't have a lot of public art here.''
Strange, but true. The one piece of public sculpture I did find here is utterly bland and inscrutable. It is made of stone, and sits across the street from city hall. It depicts a pair of grievously overweight children, hugging a pedestal, atop of which is perched an eagle, or a hawk. The bird appears to be smiling.
What this is supposed to represent, I know not. Donated to the city 20 years ago, the sculpture is titled, simply, ''The Monument.''
RCRWRTWATDVW can install whatever kind of sculpture it likes, wherever it likes, concedes Mayor Elliot. As long as it's on private land.
''Everyone went and assumed that the sculpture is being endorsed or sponsored by the city,'' he griped. ''It's not.''
Definitely not, adds Ian Mason, a Nelson city councillor. He is preparing a ''resolution of non-support'' that will make Nelson's position on the event crystal clear.
Mr. Mason expects his resolution to be adopted by city council at its next meeting, in early October. It has to, he says, because businesses are already suffering. ''I've heard from hotel and resort owners saying they've received cancellations because of the [controversy]. We are looking at significant job losses, potentially.''
Down at the Royal Canadian Legion hall, I found local army veterans plotting their own resistance to the war resisters. ''Those draft-dodging a-holes,'' snorted one legion member. ''We are in communication with our provincial command and we will be formulating a strong response to this nonsense. That's all I can say about it right now.''
Mr. Romano vows that the event will proceed, but concedes that the sculpture may not be placed in Nelson. He says another press conference regarding the affair will be held later this week. ''There has been a major development,'' he told me yesterday, but declined to elaborate.
Perhaps the only person to benefit from the maelstrom is Michelle Mason, a Vancouver-based filmmaker. The controversy, she concedes, is quite a stroke of luck; she intends to weave it into the draft dodger documentary she is making, slated to premiere at the Nelson festival.
''Things are falling nicely into place,'' she told me yesterday. ''This whole thing about the sculpture is really interesting. There are already so many monuments to war in Canada. Why not have a monument to peace?''
A nice thought. But peace is the last thing Nelson's proposed memorial has achieved.
|
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
