Driven from Florida by the hurricane Nicole, we had found refuge in central Georgia. Next to our hotel, a Japanese restaurant offered meals cooked in front of diners seated around the hot plate. There were guests at our table: a family of 10, from grandparents to grandchildren. They were celebrating one of the sons, a handsome young man, smiling and sure of himself.
Before the meal, the grandfather asked for silence and said grace. Then, the birthday boy explained to me that he worked for the air force, in an establishment where the bombs that would be dropped in Iraq are produced. He was proud of it. No question of showing my discomfort, of course.
In Quebec, we found a certain sympathy for the army. These soldiers who appear during epidemics or floods, without complaining about their fate, are our business. For the rest, they retire to Val-Cartier or Bagotville, far from urban centres.
Wars, we keep them far from us. The bombs in Iraq and Syria, the shells in Afghanistan, the same ones that we now export to Ukraine, we don’t hear them. Not their victims either.
We ignore the fact that Quebec is a major producer and exporter of ammunition, as well as the contributions of our aerospace industry to armaments.
I am a child of World War II. As I was born eight years after its end, the consequences, in terms of destruction, costs of reconstruction, health of prisoners returning from the camps, collective guilt for deportation and the Holocaust, have always been present, by far or near, during the first decades of my life.
At 24, the end of studies becomes the beginning of something else. What awaited me was conscription for the armed forces of the Netherlands. It was a difficult prospect to bear. The idea of becoming an expert in the art of killing unknown people, on the orders of politicians whose judgment did not inspire me with confidence, did not make me enthusiastic. At the time, the Vietnam War was drawing to a close, without anyone really understanding why it had started.
Conscientious objector
I have always believed that respecting the rules and requests of my superiors is an important value. But in the army, an organization whose ultimate mandate is to kill and where blind obedience is essential, this respect takes on another dimension.
I was probably destined for the artillery. My talents in mathematics and physics undoubtedly qualified me for the duties of an officer, better paid, in more comfortable quarters.
So tasked with getting faceless enemies killed, behind the horizon, on the orders of imposed and often distant superiors.
Our enemies to attack were the East Germans; NATO had so decided. The West Germans were beginning to be our friends 150 kilometers from Amsterdam.
Those from the East, the Communists behind the Iron Curtain, 200 kilometers away. I had already visited the two countries and I did not understand the difference between the populations. But I was able to observe the damage of the war: 30 years after its end, certain districts of Leipzig, city of Johann Sebastian Bach, were still in ruins.
So I applied for and was granted conscientious objector status, to be conscripted for more than 18 months: no one should think I was sneaking around. And a salary at the level of social assistance: no promotion to corporal or officer for an objector, even if my job during this replacement service was that of a lawyer!
For 75 years, European and North American territories have been spared from war, apart from the conflicts after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Now the Hydra rears its immortal head: the war is back, for a long time, it seems. We send weapons there, we receive refugees, we invite the president for a speech and we pray that it will be limited to that.
But what will we do when, after the conquest of Ukraine, our northern neighbors land on the beaches of Nunavik to steal our white gold? You, whom I suspect of being isolationists, and me, whom you think of as a pacifist? I will charge my brain and sharpen my pen; then I will take the Quebec maquis, on the Plateau Mont-Royal.