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Bonding with our neighbours
By Dorothy Cummings McLean
May 28, 2009
Dorothy Cummings McLean
In 1915 hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire in the first genocide of the 20th century. The surviving Armenians took refuge throughout the world, and by the 1980s thousands of their descendants were living in Ontario.
Back then I knew almost nothing about Armenians. They were a special kind of Catholic — that I knew. They didn’t have their own local church, so they borrowed our parish church on Sunday afternoons. I knew the Armenian name Aram Khachaturian because he was a great composer whose music appeared on our piano. I did not yet know about the genocide.
Back then I knew almost nothing about Armenians. They were a special kind of Catholic — that I knew. They didn’t have their own local church, so they borrowed our parish church on Sunday afternoons. I knew the Armenian name Aram Khachaturian because he was a great composer whose music appeared on our piano. I did not yet know about the genocide.
On Tuesday, March 26, 1985, the RCMP received a letter demanding that three members of an Armenian terrorist organization be released from prison and put on a plane to Beirut. These three men had been arrested following an attack on the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa: they had killed a Canadian security guard and taken hostages. If Canadian authorities did not comply, said the letter, three bombs would detonate on the Toronto subway during the following Monday’s afternoon rush hour.
My little brother always took the subway to school, but that Monday my mother drove him. Thousands of other Torontonians, including Cardinal Gerald Emmet Carter, defied the terrorist threat and took the subway. I remember reading a column by a firebrand columnist in the Toronto Star: she wrote that whatever sympathy the terrorists were trying to get for their cause, they had lost hers. Despite the innocence of the thousands of Armenian-Canadians who lived in Toronto, the incident became known as the Armenian Bomb Threat. And my little brother was, for a time, terrified of the people who shared our parish church.
In 1999, to defend Kosovar Albanians, NATO bombed the Serbian city of Novi Sad. For 10 years, Canadians had followed the civil wars of former Yugoslavia on the news and shuddered at reports of rape camps and mass executions. Canada had sent peacekeepers to former Yugoslavia in the earlier conflicts; in the Kosovo War, we sent F-18 bombers. Serbians in Canada and Serbian-Canadians protested.
I had friends from Novi Sad, and I opposed the bombings. Knowing something of the city, I didn’t see why it was a military target. How civilians in Novi Sad were responsible for the violence in Kosovo was likewise a mystery to me. I thought this as I hurried past the U.S. Consulate in Toronto one day on my way to work; Serbian-Canadians were demonstrating outside. Suddenly, a protestor lunged towards me and blew his whistle in my ear. Shocked and hurt, I clapped a hand to my head.
A few weeks ago, thousands of Tamils and Tamil-Canadians suddenly swarmed busy and dangerous expressways, shutting them down for hours. They were bringing attention to a civil war that has plagued Sri Lanka for more than 25 years. But Canadians were not entirely ignorant of this war: Michael Ondaatje, one of Canada’s greatest authors, was born in Sri Lanka and wrote of its violence in Anil’s Ghost. We had heard, too, of the Tamil Tigers, or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, for they are infamous for having both pioneered suicide bombing and assassinating Rajiv Gandhi. What we didn’t know was the lengths to which Tamil-Canadians would go to demand our attention. On Mother’s Day, 2,000 demonstrators occupied the Gardiner Expressway. Bill Blair, Toronto’s Chief of Police, voiced concerns for the safety of the children in the mob.
Canada has never had a civil war. In all our decades of tension between French Canada and English Canada, we have never slaughtered each other. And, with the exception of some U-boats, we have not faced invaders since the Fenian raids of the 1860s. We are, we pride ourselves, a refuge from war and chaos.
But Canadians have indeed known war. For generations Canadian soldiers have fought in foreign causes: for British imperial interests, for Europe’s survival, for South Korea, for Afghanistan. Canada is also a home to those who have escaped foreign wars or their aftermath. Old Canadians understand that new Canadians feel great loyalty to those friends and family that they have left behind.
However, there is another bond that must be honoured. This is the bond between neighbours, the bond between people who actually live in the same country, in the same city, on the same streets.
“Who is my neighbour?” asked the lawyer of Jesus in the Gospel. In reply Jesus told the story of a man who did not belong to their ethnic group, a Samaritan who responded in love to the non-Samaritan whom he found at his feet. However close we may feel to our own ethnic tribe, and however much we are moved by their misfortunes across the world, the neighbours with whom we live are no less our neighbours than those whom we have left. Our Canadian neighbours don’t deserve to be threatened, attacked or held hostage. And they don’t like to see children being used as human shields.
My little brother always took the subway to school, but that Monday my mother drove him. Thousands of other Torontonians, including Cardinal Gerald Emmet Carter, defied the terrorist threat and took the subway. I remember reading a column by a firebrand columnist in the Toronto Star: she wrote that whatever sympathy the terrorists were trying to get for their cause, they had lost hers. Despite the innocence of the thousands of Armenian-Canadians who lived in Toronto, the incident became known as the Armenian Bomb Threat. And my little brother was, for a time, terrified of the people who shared our parish church.
In 1999, to defend Kosovar Albanians, NATO bombed the Serbian city of Novi Sad. For 10 years, Canadians had followed the civil wars of former Yugoslavia on the news and shuddered at reports of rape camps and mass executions. Canada had sent peacekeepers to former Yugoslavia in the earlier conflicts; in the Kosovo War, we sent F-18 bombers. Serbians in Canada and Serbian-Canadians protested.
I had friends from Novi Sad, and I opposed the bombings. Knowing something of the city, I didn’t see why it was a military target. How civilians in Novi Sad were responsible for the violence in Kosovo was likewise a mystery to me. I thought this as I hurried past the U.S. Consulate in Toronto one day on my way to work; Serbian-Canadians were demonstrating outside. Suddenly, a protestor lunged towards me and blew his whistle in my ear. Shocked and hurt, I clapped a hand to my head.
A few weeks ago, thousands of Tamils and Tamil-Canadians suddenly swarmed busy and dangerous expressways, shutting them down for hours. They were bringing attention to a civil war that has plagued Sri Lanka for more than 25 years. But Canadians were not entirely ignorant of this war: Michael Ondaatje, one of Canada’s greatest authors, was born in Sri Lanka and wrote of its violence in Anil’s Ghost. We had heard, too, of the Tamil Tigers, or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, for they are infamous for having both pioneered suicide bombing and assassinating Rajiv Gandhi. What we didn’t know was the lengths to which Tamil-Canadians would go to demand our attention. On Mother’s Day, 2,000 demonstrators occupied the Gardiner Expressway. Bill Blair, Toronto’s Chief of Police, voiced concerns for the safety of the children in the mob.
Canada has never had a civil war. In all our decades of tension between French Canada and English Canada, we have never slaughtered each other. And, with the exception of some U-boats, we have not faced invaders since the Fenian raids of the 1860s. We are, we pride ourselves, a refuge from war and chaos.
But Canadians have indeed known war. For generations Canadian soldiers have fought in foreign causes: for British imperial interests, for Europe’s survival, for South Korea, for Afghanistan. Canada is also a home to those who have escaped foreign wars or their aftermath. Old Canadians understand that new Canadians feel great loyalty to those friends and family that they have left behind.
However, there is another bond that must be honoured. This is the bond between neighbours, the bond between people who actually live in the same country, in the same city, on the same streets.
“Who is my neighbour?” asked the lawyer of Jesus in the Gospel. In reply Jesus told the story of a man who did not belong to their ethnic group, a Samaritan who responded in love to the non-Samaritan whom he found at his feet. However close we may feel to our own ethnic tribe, and however much we are moved by their misfortunes across the world, the neighbours with whom we live are no less our neighbours than those whom we have left. Our Canadian neighbours don’t deserve to be threatened, attacked or held hostage. And they don’t like to see children being used as human shields.
Dorothy Cummings McLean