Category Archives: Nationality

Stolen Valor

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

As a Canadian, I know the American military as fictional character. The military is the journey down the Nung River to assassinate Colonel Kurtz; it’s the destruction of a bridge built by British POW’s on the River Kwai; it’s the Kathryn Bigelow film that won Best Picture in 2010 that I never saw but I’m sure was great; it’s Jessica Chastain leading a team to assassinate Osama bin Laden with a plot that was way too confusing for my 12 year-old self; it’s Vincent D’Onofrio doing the Kubrick stare in a communal bathroom while reciting the Riflemen’s Creed.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

I have no personal connection to the military, much less the infamous American forces. In Canada, we remember the First World War that happened a century ago for about a week each year. But in America, it’s everywhere, everyday.

I’m fascinated by the universal admiration and unconditional respect granted towards veterans. When I was in Texas recently, I saw dozens of cars, mostly trucks, with stickers indicating that the driver was a veteran, it was something they wanted the world to know. Everywhere we went advertised discounts for veterans. One of the universities we visited, Texas A&M at College Station, is one of six United States Senior Military Colleges. We saw men my age (you could practically call them boys) walking around in the blazing heat in full uniform, equipped with knee high leather boots. When my family went to New York for the first time when I was 12, we took a train from JFK to Manhattan upon arrival. The first person we spoke to was a young man who was on his way to school at West Point. My dad was impressed, I was oblivious.

Military status is so valued in America that there are people who walk around impersonating military office

Apocalypse Now (1979)

rs, and in response, those who look out for this impersonation and call them out. They look for flaws in their uniforms, they ask them detailed questions to catch them in a lie. They film their encounter, and once they’re sure of the accused’s guilt, they yell “Stolen Valor!”, and publicly shame them. Anthony Anderson runs a Stolen Valor website called guardianofvalor.com with its very own ‘Hall of Shame’, a database with pictures, names, and write-ups of men and women who have impersonated military officers. This issue has even been taken to the federal level. In 2005, George W. Bush singed a law declaring it a federal misdemeanour to falsely represent oneself as having any US military decoration. In 2013, that law was adapted to protect freedom of speech, now making it illegal to benefit financially from an impersonation, such as receiving discounts or obtaining money or property.

Anderson has noted in an interview with the podcast ‘Reply All’ that publicly shaming a military impersonator has viral potential.

The Hurt Locker (2009)

“I use this word and – an- and I tell people I hate using it, is–there’s entertainment value behind the video. … it actually caused … representatives, lawmakers to get involved with the Stolen Valor movement. And that one video has, so far, caused five new Stolen Valor laws to be passed in five different states.”

Both Anderson and Nate Bathea, who was stationed in Afghanistan in 2009, have noted the dangers of people going too far in their search for authenticity. Unfortunately, the movement has cause some to go after those who are military, but simply don’t want to be confronted, therefore making themselves look guilty. People with mental disabilities who wear

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

uniforms as a form of admiration have been harassed and humiliated. Anderson firmly claims that this is not the true intention of the Stolen Valor movement, and he takes action for copycat websites that post these videos to be removed.

Bethea says he wishes the Stolen Valor movement didn’t have to exist. To him, the reason for it is the major disconnect between civilians and servicemen.

“The people who wear uniforms are still people. Because it’s weird when people are treating you like a symbol and you’re trying to say, ‘Hey man, talk to me, I’m a person.’ Like, talk to me as a human being not – not as th- the symbolic representation of what you think the uniform I’m wearing means.”

I’ll never be able to fully understand what it means to work in the military. And I don’t think anyone truly knows until they experience it themselves. The fact of the matter is that I never want to.

Vogt, P.J. (Host). Pinnamaneni, S. (Producer). (2016, July 14). Stolen Valor. Reply All. Podcast retrieved from https://gimletmedia.com/episode/70-stolen-valor/

#hatchimalmademydaughtercry

Recently our Arts Studies class has been studying Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco, a journalistic comic book depicting conversations between Sacco and Bosniaks during the Bosnian War. One of the questions asked by a Bosniak character in the book is “Do they know about Gorazde in America?”. Sacco responds, “Yes, [I lied]”. (Sacco. 53). This book has reminded me in many ways of the war in Syria, and Americans (and westerners in general) attitudes towards it. Do Americans really know about Syria, specifically the people of Aleppo?

One night, shortly after Christmas, my parents and I sat down to watch NBC Nightly News. As experienced viewers, we knew the general layout of the broadcast’s stories: Global news, national news, medical revelation, wildcard, and heartwarming story about a young child and their brave golden retriever. On this night, the “wildcard” story was one that affected hundreds of families around the United States, bringing tragedy to those who just wanted to have a memorable Christmas. This tragedy was not the result of a severe weather catastrophe and not the result of disease. No, on this night, the National Broadcasting Company ran a four minute story about how Hatchimals, the hottest toy of 2016, were not working properly.

For context, Hatchimals are brightly coloured, cuter versions of Furby’s, with the technological advancement of being able to ‘hatch’ itself out of an egg. That’s the crucial part. There are thousands of fluorescent, noise making toys out there, but when a child takes a Hatchimal out of its box, it’s inside an egg, which the bird will break itself out of with its plastic beak when shaken. I admit, that’s a pretty cool toy, especially in the eyes of an eight year old. But they aren’t cheap. They cost around $50.00 – $90.00 in stores, while desperate parents could pay $250.00 for one on eBay. I can’t exactly remember, but I’m just hoping that I never forced my parents to but me a toy that expensive when I was that age through temper tantrums and the silent treatment.

Back to the night in question. Reports are coming in that these toys are malfunctioning, they aren’t breaking out of their shell, essentially ruining the whole point. Parents flocked to Twitter to share their stories, telling the manufacturer that their child’s Christmas was ruined because of it. One person tweeted: “Hatimal didnt hatch after 14 Hours and now all lights have gone off. How do i exchange a dud ? My 4 year old is gutted” and “# hatchimal ruined my 6 yr olds Christmas. All the effort and it done nothing Christmas day #hatchimalmademydaughtercry” (all typo’s were present in the original tweets).

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen parents blame a toy company for their child’s dependency on material objects, but for some reason, this story struck a nerve with me. While this was happening, an actually devastating event was taking place across the globe. At this time, thousands of Syrian children probably forgot it was Christmas, because they were so concerned with keeping themselves and their families alive, wondering when the next bomb would go off, and how they would get out of the hell they were living in. So many families were broken through loss, and a whole city destroyed by madness and chaos.

I’m never one to tell a person they can’t be upset because “someone else has it worse”. I understand that hardship isn’t a contest. A person living in the safest city in the world with the most loving family and perfect health can be suffering immensely inside, and that pain is valid. But this was different. I myself have been wondering what I, a teenager in Vancouver, can do to help the innocent people of Syria and other countries torn apart by war. The best answer I can come up with is to keep these people and their stories alive. Share them on social media, talk about them with your family and friends, learn the facts. By going on Twitter and telling the world how hard your child has it because their $80.00 pink robotic bird isn’t working, you are displaying your ignorance and disregard for other people’s suffering, and it saddens me how people can waste their time with such trivial things.

I think my passion towards this particular event is a build up of my frustration towards the countless tragedies that have taken place around the world in recent months. Not just the war in Syria, but also the shooting in the Turkish nightclub, the suicide bombings in Baghdad during Ramadan, the mass shootings that now seem to happen everyday in the United States. People have accused westerners of not caring and being ignorant. Of course I thought this wasn’t true, and that people did care but they just didn’t have the ability to help. But that story on NBC, those tweets, made me think that people really don’t care, and I can’t imagine what other tragic events will be pushed aside and ignored tomorrow.

Information about Hatchimals thanks to NBC: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/hatchimals-barbie-disappoint-parents-kids-christmas-n700601

Hymn to Hestia

For the past couple of weeks my ASTU 100 class have been discussing Michael Ondaatje’s Running In The Family, a book that seems to defy the concept of genre, but I personally describe as a somewhat fictionalized memoir. A theme of the book is the concept of identity, and how it can grow and change. I began thinking of my own identity, specifically nationality, ethnicity, and religion. I began to consider if where my grandparents are from really has anything to do with my identity at all.

My father’s mother, Maureen, as a young woman in Northern Ireland

I worked at the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park in North Vancouver from the summer of 2015 to the summer of 2016. As one of Vancouver’s most popular tourist attractions, our guests came from every corner of the globe. This made the job very interesting; I was able to hear stories from one hundred different people from one hundred different countries in one day, even if the interactions only lasted a minute.

What made the job even more compelling was the people that I worked with. We all got along very well, so I was always comfortable asking my colleagues about themselves, often starting with “where were you born?”. Of course some were from Vancouver, but not many. The majority of people that I worked with were not only not from Vancouver, but not from Canada. I worked with people from England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Germany, Ukraine, Poland, Philippines, India, Korea, Laos, Spain, Iran, and many others. Many of our co-workers were also of First Nations descent. Even amongst those who were born in Vancouver like myself, no two had identical ethnic backgrounds.

A recent photo of my mother’s parents, Leslye and Allan

This culturally diverse group is nothing new in Vancouver, which is one of the many reasons why this city is as great as it is. Vancouver’s vast multiculturalism is represented in the UBC student body. On the day I wrote this blog post I walked from a class to my dorm room with two fellow classmates, one from Thailand and one born in Uganda who lived in China for ten years.

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My mother in the early 1990’s, visiting Ireland

While celebrating diversity is definitely a positive for society, it can pose some internal questionss about ones own sense of identity. I will use myself as an example. I was born and raised in North Vancouver along with my two older sisters. My father was born in Toronto to Catholic Northern Irish immigrants. He lived in Toronto only briefly as a baby before his parents decided to move to Vancouver (probably because of the weather). My very religious grandmother would go on to have four more sons, totalling five boys. Neither she or my grandfather were well educated (both never finished high school), so my father and his brothers grew up very modestly. My grandad used to see it as a source of pride when there was meat on the dinner table.

Seven years after the birth of my father, my mother was born. In South Africa, my grandpa was a university educated dentist, while my nanny (what we call my grandmother) was working as a lab technician when they met. After my mother’s oldest sister was born, they moved to Lusaka, Zambia, where their second daughter was born, as well as my mother, the youngest. They lived there for a short length of time, after which they moved to various places, including New York where my grandpa attended Columbia University to become a periodontist. My mother spent most of her childhood growing up in Hamilton, Ontario.

My parents at their wedding in 1990

Both my parents received university educations before they met. My father holds a B.A in Communications from Simon Fraser University, and my mother holds a B.Sc from the University of Guelph. They would eventually meet while working in government jobs in Toronto. My dad exceeded expectations, being the only one of his brothers to go to university. While both my mothers older sisters attended university, making her education very likely. The only expectation my mother defied was when she brought her Catholic boyfriend home to her Jewish parents.

I won’t go far into details. Basically my fathers side of the family had no issues accepting my mother, while her side of the family was more apprehensive. My grandpa even had my father meet with a rabbi to discuss the possibility of conversion (to no avail). This ultimately resulted with them eloping in Vancouver in 1990, having my (twin) sisters in 1993, and me in 1998.

There are not many “Irish” Jews in the world, so my ethnic background is definitely interesting, and something I am proud of. But being a part of two virtually unrelated cultures can make it difficult to identify with either of them. One of my friends back at the Bridge had parents who were both born and raised in Iran. She was extremely proud of her heritage, very knowledgeable about its history, and fluent in Farsi. My father’s family has been in Ireland for centuries, so there is no doubt about the location of that side of my origins. But, because of Jewish law, I am not Catholic, unlike my uncles, aunts, and cousins on my fathers side.

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My parents with my older sisters, around 1994

Being Jewish is interesting, because you can identify with being Jewish without believing in the religion at all, as it is also an ethnicity. This more or less describes my mother’s side of the family, herself, my sisters, and myself. But even my secular cousins had Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, went to Hebrew School, have Hebrew names, and went to typically Jewish summer camps. There’s also the fact that they live in Toronto, which has a significantly larger and more active Jewish community compared to that of Vancouver. Added to the fact that I only have a rough idea of what countries my maternal ancestors occupied. South Africa was only home to my family for two or three generations. Before that was a mashup of countries such as Latvia, Russia, Ukraine, and other Eastern European nations where Ashkenazi Jews lived.

I pester my parents daily for answers about my background, but of course they have limits to their knowledge. Even my 92 year old grandma, with her Irish accent, does her best to tell me stories about her childhood in Belfast. I hope I will one day be able to answer more questions about where my family is from, but for now I’ll have to settle with what I have. In fact, the more I learn about my family history, the more I learn about the personalities and individual qualities of the people telling it too me. I have learned that nationality, ethnicity, and religion are not the only elements of a person’s identity, and certainly not the most important.