Too many heroes are still forgotten, even on Remembrance Day
Column: Mickleburgh
Over the years, there have been numerous books and documentaries about the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, but at a time when there is such ongoing acknowledgement of Canada’s past historical wrongs, they remain forgotten at Remembrance Day ceremonies, ignored by Veterans’ Affairs. Even the Legion.
By Rod Mickleburgh
It’s been a while since I attended the main Remembrance Day ceremony at Victory Square in downtown Vancouver, opting instead for the quieter, less grand but no less meaningful remembrance at the Japanese Canadian War Memorial from World War One in Stanley Park. Surrounded by trees, their leaves tinged with autumn, there is a sense of peace that appeals to me, along with the reminder of the shameful internment of 23,000 Japanese Canadians during World War Two.
But this year we bypassed both and went to Mountain View Cemetery for two very different commemorations that pinpointed individual veterans in a way large ceremonies cannot. We ...
Munich: Edge of War wallows in pre-war paranoia
Munich: The Edge of War
When the world feels unfriendly and the people you thought were friends whisper behind your back, you know you're not in Hollywood anymore. You're watching the fully earnest Munich: Edge of War.
Sometimes you have to dig a hole to stay alive
Remembering Orme Payne, Part Two of Two
From the Great Depression and prairie drought, to mano-a-mano combat with the Germans in the waning days of war, Orme Payne's life wove a tapestry of the Twentieth Century.
By Rod Mickleburgh
My friend Orme went through a lot in his final years. But when you’ve been through a Depression and a World War, you learn to take things as they come. During our many conversations, he never complained, never felt he was hard done by, even when he experienced the long months of isolation imposed by COVID-19. “I’m confined to barracks” was his matter-of-fact assessment. Over the phone, he was always cheerful. His yarns and colourful expressions never dried up, aided by a memory that remained intact until the end. And damn, he was funny….
Orme died this past September, his body finally giving up the ghost, after 98 years and five months of a very good life. I miss him terribly.
On Remembrance Day, the first Orme has missed in 75 years, ...
Review: Midway torpedoes MAGA hat hate
Movie review: Midway
Roland Emmerich shows uncharacteristic restraint in his ode to the Battle of Midway, an against-all-odds story of courage and bravery that truly made America “great."
Lest We Forget the heroes once branded “enemy aliens”
Mickleburgh: Japanese-Canadian Veterans
Huddled under a colourful autumn canopy, in a secluded corner of Vancouver’s Stanley Park, Rod Mickleburgh found a Remembrance Day ceremony that refused to forget Canada’s racist past.
#TIFF2018: Skipping the lineups
Movies: #TIFF18, Toronto International Film Festival
Our correspondent finds ways to see all the Donald Trump-themed films he wants, and with no waiting required
By Jay Stone
(September 8, 2018) TORONTO — Today we invoked another Toronto film festival rule for the retired critic, which is that we don’t stand in line for anything. This is partly because life is too short, and partly because you might not get in anyway and so you’ve used up some of your precious remaining minutes idly shifting from one leg to the other, indulging in the futile hope of getting a seat that will probably be in the front row, and standing behind people who talk in bored nasal voices about their film festival experiences. One tries not to listen, but one is human, after all, and one is in danger of grinding away all the remaining enamel on one’s teeth.
The downside of this guideline is that one doesn’t get to see a lot of movies that everyone else is dying to see, which is perhaps not ...
13 Minutes Resets Time-Bomb of Fascism
Movie Review: 13 Minutes
Oliver Hirschbiegel returns to the land of the brown shirts to extract another timely lesson about the role of the individual in this detailed portrait of the man who nearly assassinated Adolf Hitler
Dunkirk Doesn’t Work
Movie Review: Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan's war movie about the 'miracle' at Dunkirk fights itself on the beaches, in the air and on the seas; it never surrenders a strand of storyline in its desire to go big.
Land of Mine Digs Up Explosive Past
Movie Review: Land of Mine
Denmark's best foreign film contender didn't win an Oscar, but this truth-based drama about young Germans forced to clear beaches blows up war movie cliche by focusing on consequence instead of action
