• Kbin_space_program
    link
    fedilink
    215
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Canada’s Hundred Days. Aka the last 100 days of WW1.

    Functionally, Canada won WW1 for the allies.

    Being under 10% of the WW1 force, in that period they tackled defences everyone else thought impregnable and shattered them, like the Hindenburg Line, and in the process paved the way for the allied advance. They also took out a quarter of the German forces in that time.

    While they did arguably use proto-blitzkrieg tactics of using lots of machine guns, and then also using vehicles to move troops even quicker while using said machine guns, one of the biggest factors was a prodigious use of chemical weapons.

    To the point that in the interwar period, Canada had the largest capacity and stores of chemical weapons. During WW2, said stockpile is one of the reasons Hitler refused to use chemical weapons on the allies.

    Edit: And a lot of the rules on fair treatment of POWs and rules on capturing surrendered soldiers also stems of Canadian soldiers behaviours during WW1.

    • @Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      44
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      To be fair, French Canadians were overrepresented and didn’t want to be there so they figured if they were super good at it they could go back home ASAP.

      • Narrrz
        link
        fedilink
        198 months ago

        so the French are cowards, Canadians are teddy bears, but somehow when you combine the two they not only cancel our but hyperamplify the opposite?

        • @CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          988 months ago

          The French will riot for weeks if you raise their retirement age. Americans will just complain online if you take away their human rights.

          The French are not the cowards.

          • @trafficnab@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            288 months ago

            The French shut the entire country down when the government tried to raise the diesel tax by 10 cents, don’t fuck with French labor

            • Schadrach
              link
              fedilink
              28 months ago

              If I remember my chemistry right, chlorine trifluoride would like to have a chat with you. It’s such a powerful oxidizer that when burned with oxygen, the oxygen is actually the fuel rather than the oxidizer.

              But then this is the stuff that the Nazis decided was too dangerous to use as rocket propellant, then decided it was too dangerous to use as a chemical weapon.

              • @merc@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                18 months ago

                I don’t want to chat with Chlorine Trifluoride, it’s nasty.

                But yeah, there are some obscure situations where oxygen isn’t the oxidizing agent, but the name “oxidizer” gives a clue how rare that is. In most normal situations, oxygen is the oxidizer and the thing it reacts with is the fuel. Partially that’s due to Oxygen being a good electron acceptor, but mostly it’s because there’s a lot of oxygen in the planet, and anywhere you can have humans you pretty much need to have oxygen.

        • Kbin_space_program
          link
          fedilink
          58 months ago

          Fun fact, numbers to numbers for personnel, vehicles, equipment, air force and navy, France has more stuff than Britain in every category.

          I don’t know too much of how good their stuff is other than the Rafale being a fine piece of tech.

        • Ech
          link
          fedilink
          English
          18 months ago

          Two incredibly dumb generalizations proven wrong in this very thread, but people like you are still perpetuating them.

    • Jay
      link
      fedilink
      English
      158 months ago

      In our defense we were jonesing for maple syrup.

      • @spankinspinach@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        148 months ago

        We’re a simple people, enjoying quiet lives and good standard of living. But threaten our maple syrup - even from afar - and we will give you a reason for the Geneva convention!

    • @wombatula@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      38 months ago

      Also don’t forget the good old Shotgun / Trenchgun, which was seen as an unfair weapon in trench warfare as there was no answer to it in close range and tight corridors.

      Germany literally banned the use of them, Germany.

  • @dangblingus@lemmy.world
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    163
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Genocide of our indigenous population mostly. The worst of it ended in 1996 when the last residential school closed. Basically, the Catholic Church under the authorization of the Canadian Federal Government in the 1800s and onwards, abducted children from indigenous communities, took them to boarding schools where they attempted to assimilate them into Eurocentric culture by punishing them for speaking their own language and practicing their own culture. Beatings, sexual abuse, and neglect were commonplace, with many children dying of illness, exposure, or violence. Many children survived the schools and are still alive today to tell us about it. There are also mass graves at several of these schools where children’s corpses were dumped and hidden from public view, until ground x-ray technology came around and we found the graves.

    Also, random weird fact: women weren’t allowed to have bank accounts in Canada until like 1964.

  • TSG_Asmodeus (he, him)
    link
    fedilink
    English
    114
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    The Nazi’s got the term, and concept, ‘final solution’ from a Canadian:

    “It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is being geared towards the final solution of our Indian Problem.

    “…the system was open to criticism. Insufficient care was exercised in the admission of children to the schools. The well-known predisposition of Indians to tuberculosis resulted in a very large percentage of deaths among the pupils. They were housed in buildings not carefully designed for school purposes, and these buildings became infected and dangerous to the inmates. It is quite within the mark to say that fifty per cent of the children who passed through these schools did not live to benefit from the education which they had received therein.

    (This is why there was a fair bit of anger in Canada when Civ 6 added Wilfred Laurier as Canada’s leader.

    EDIT: I transposed Laurier and MacDonald here, as someone pointed out. The above quotes are from Duncan Campbell Scott, as Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs under MacDonald. Laurier was a key architect of the Residential School system. TLDR; MacDonald started the genocide, Laurier built upon it.)

  • “Good” at war : ✅️

    Human rights : ❌️

    Supporting catholic genocide : ✅️

    We have a really weird history that isn’t really something to be proud of…

    • @Smoogs@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      5
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      And There in lies what annoys me with Trudeau. He is the epitome of the morally pompous kid that shows up in the middle of the fight and decides right then who is the bully and the victim without getting the full story of how the fight started and just doesn’t care. Cringefully and willfully naive with an unhealthy side of ego. The worst kind of Canadian.

      • @dx1@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        28 months ago

        With citizens, ignorance can be an excuse. With politicians, it’s their job to know, and if they’re on the wrong side that pretty much means they’re complicit.

        • @Smoogs@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          18 months ago

          With politicians in his position they should have intel. So I’m deeply disturbed if his intel on this is lacking why he’s acting this way when even the most basic news outlet is describing it pretty basic. There’s just no way citizens should be that much more educated than their prime minister. If he does have intel no one else has on the citizen level but to then go off calling them as supporting terrorist as a result is just shameful.

  • @Epicurus0319@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    248 months ago

    Never ask a woman her age

    Never ask a man his salary

    Never ask Canada what the “indigenous boarding schools” were for

    Never ask Russia, America, Hamas or Israel why they all see the Geneva Convention as a to-do list

  • lad
    link
    fedilink
    15
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    There were also jewish refugees that were not allowed into Canada. Afair, the bigger arsehole in that story was the UK, that panicked and decided that everyone who fled Germany during some 193x–194x must certainly be a german spy. They forcefully moved people to camps, and also to foreign territories, but it didn’t work terribly well with Canada, too.

    I though this to be the article I first heard this story from, but it doesn’t seem to address that. Here I found some more details, e.g. on how refugees were in prisoner of war camps along with actual nazis.

    Edit: But those are likely not related to the question of what Canada did to become example of how Geneva convention should be, so maybe an unnecessary info ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • thelazywriter
    link
    fedilink
    128 months ago

    To add to the list: internment of Hungarian and Ukrainian Canadians in WWI in Canada (some other Eastern Europeans too); internment of Japanese Canadians in WWII in Canada.

  • LittleHermiT
    link
    fedilink
    English
    68 months ago

    So like non-francophones in Quebec, but without the beatings.

  • Dr. Coomer
    link
    fedilink
    3
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Add Canada to the list of countries not to mess with.

  • @wombatula@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    18 months ago

    I love how most of the comments in this thread completely ignore the context of the post, and instead are “Canada bad!” posts that seem to delight in bringing up every horrible thing the country ever did.

  • @BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    08 months ago

    The mask is slipping…

    https://breachmedia.ca/leaked-report-accuses-canada-of-covering-for-mining-companies-in-war-torn-ethiopia/

    The report indicates that new investments by Canadian mining companies in Tigray have increased as the region has been plunged into a major humanitarian crisis from military attacks by the Ethiopian and Eritrean government, whom the United Nations has accused of deliberately “starving Tigrayans.”

    ​​The U.N has warned that hundreds of thousands of people in Tigray face starvation, as the Ethiopian military—backed by Eritrean troops and militia from Ethiopia’s Amhara region—have raped women and children, committed massacres, burned crops, and blocked aid to the region as they conduct a lop-sided military offensive against the Tigray People

  • Queen HawlSera
    link
    fedilink
    English
    -12
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Well Justin Trudeau basically had an “Aww shucks” attitude to churches being burnt down because it took focus off of his grandpa’s “residential schools”

    And then he filled MAID full of loopholes to encourage mass genocide of the poor.