OUR FATHERS

When your father came as a soldier with the Canadian army to Germany

After having liberated Europe from my people

He smiled and tossed a chewing gum to my then 10-year old father, 

who never forgot neither smile nor chewing gum, maybe because it was his first gum ever.

Never would my father have believed, that in your own country, they would treat your father worse than some of the people he liberated had been treated by my people.

Incomprehensible it would have been to him,

that they would not allow you to speak to your father, for many years, until you could not understand his/your own language anymore.

That neither your father, nor you, could vote until 1960.

That even your children were sent away to harsh residential schools to be beaten, abused, belittled and estranged from their families and tradition.

When I moved to your country after having lived my childhood and youth behind the iron curtain, many people here were full of compassion and pity for me. 

Yet, I did not require it.

When you and your children demanded attention and recognition for suffering and pain, most people here were not willing to even acknowledge all the evil that had been done. 

This made me very sad.

My father, when I told him about it, started crying.

He had thought so much more of this country, a country that brought about such a merciful and generous victor.