No sooner did I write that two veterans would get the last word on the Remembrance Day poppies discussion, than a Facebook message arrived from my friend Walter Van Veen, whose teenage father spent the war hiding in a secret compartment in an Amsterdam flat. A Jewish family shared the compartment. Facing starvation, they gave themselves up a few weeks before the end of the war—and were killed. Walter's father held out and survived. Walter writes: You know my take on this [the media firestorm over white poppies being handed out at the National War Memorial]. This is one fairly cynical narrow view...

[See correction appended below.] I am amazed that Liberals and New Democrats have not been more effective at highlighting the hypocrisy of the Harper government's claw back of services and benefits to veterans—especially vets who suffered cruelly in Stephen Harper's Canada's* Afghanistan adventure. Demonstrations on Remembrance Day weekend protested the closure of Veteran's Affairs offices across the country. Recent news stories have highlighted the government's haste to drum injured vets out of service before they qualify for extended benefits. The contrast proved too much for a Halifax friend who watched the Halifax Mooseheads organization celebrate "DND Night" Friday. He writes: Two dignified octogenarians in wheelchairs...

Growing up in the 1950s and '60s in the United States, where right-wing scoundrels turned patriotic symbols into political cudgels, left me with a lifelong aversion to flags, ribbons, lapel pins, and other obligatory trappings of national fealty. When I moved to Canada, this aversion morphed into a disinclination to wear poppies. As best I can tell, most Canadians see the poppy as a neutral symbol of respect for veterans. Social pressure to wear it is strong. Acquaintances and strangers alike view my failure to fall in step as inexplicable, disrespectful, and distasteful. I regret this. After years of attempts to...