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A landing craft filled with Canadian troops makes its way to Juno Beach on the morning of June 6, 1944. In the background can be seen other landing craft and the larger ships which carried the men and equipment across the English Channel from the United Kingdom.Library and Archives Canada

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D-Day’s long reach

There is another group of “war veterans” coming up behind those so-brave troops who fought in Normandy. We were children in June, 1944, and I vividly remember the days before D-Day.

Leading up to June 6, the streets of Portsmouth, from where the Canadians left for Juno Beach, were lined with tanks, trucks, heavy artillery and so many men. The evening before D-Day, the sky was crowded with planes towing gliders filled with paratroopers, many of whom died that same night. Unbeknownst to us, General Dwight Eisenhower had his headquarters three miles from where we lived, tucked away inside a chalk pit in the South Downs, where before (and after) the war we would pick flowers and have picnics.

I also experienced the Battle of Britain first-hand. (We had been evacuated from the vulnerable naval base in Portsmouth, ironically to another coastal town.) We saw the planes plunging to earth, smoke spiralling up. We heard the guns rat-a-tatting. We saw the parachutes coming down. I remember it as if it happened yesterday. I can understand how all the men and women who went to war cannot ever forget.

Sheila Barnum, Kingston

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I barely know where to begin with a letter to the editor on the 75th anniversary of D-Day. I visited Juno Beach on the 50th anniversary, a few months before I started my teaching career, a moment never forgotten; I took a group of students there two years ago, and watched them solemnly walk the beach; I was fortunate to have an endearing friendship with the late George Blackburn, a veteran and author of The Guns of Normandy.

June 6, 1944, means a lot to many people on a personal level, but it also carries great meaning to the country as a whole. Former prime minister Paul Martin put it well in his address at Juno 10 years ago today: “The waters of the English Channel and the winds of the Normandy coast have erased the footprints these men left in Juno Beach. But not even the great tides of time can wash away the deep impressions they have made in our national memory, and in the chronicle of the free world.”

J.D.M. Stewart, Toronto

The word ‘genocide’

Re PM Accepts Indigenous Inquiry’s Finding Of Genocide (June 5): In 2000, Michael Ignatieff was the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. He had this to say then about the use of the word “genocide” in a lecture he gave about Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish-Polish lawyer who combined genos (Greek for race or tribe) with cide (Latin for to kill) in 1943 to describe the Holocaust: “Those who should use the word genocide never let it slip their mouths. Those who unfortunately do use it, banalize it into a validation of every kind of victimhood.”

Did we try to take the Indian out of the Indian? We did. Our actions were cruel and generationally damaging. Do we continue to marginalize, discriminate, victimize, and yes, murder, Indigenous peoples? We do. Was the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls necessary, for the good of all our country, to bear witness to our national shame and crimes? It was.

But to name the actions of our past a genocide? In doing so, we do the inquiry’s work an incalculable disservice. Now the debate rages over definitions and takes the focus from where it belongs.

What do we do now?

Nancy Carten, Calgary

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What is the difference between forced assimilation and genocide?

Jamie Alley, Victoria

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Thank you for making clear that what inquiry head Marion Buller is saying is “that this country is, at this very moment, pursuing a policy of genocide against Indigenous people (A Genocide Charge Misses The Mark – editorial, June 5). As you say, this is an absurd characterization. It should be quickly and firmly dismissed.

Of course, our PM has accepted it. I suspect, come October, he’ll realize that it wasn’t so politically correct to be so politically correct.

Rudy Buller, Toronto

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The land of First Nations people was occupied by European colonizers who denied them equal participation and rights.

The template of colonial-occupier/Indigenous-occupied continues today. Indigenous people are Canada’s “the other,” separate from the Euro-centric, still predominantly white, multi-ethnic, urban Canada. The social separated-ness of “the other” is reinforced spatially by a geography of extremes between urban, densely settled Canada, and the vast spaces of the rest of Canada.

Genocide is the extreme of how those in power treat “the other.” The violence against Indigenous women and girls is an individualized form of institutionalized, slow-strangulation genocide.

Reiner Jaakson, Oakville, Ont.

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Genocide? How can we solve a problem if we define it improperly?

George Roberts, Calgary

Relations with China

The juxtaposition of headlines on your front page on Wednesday was intriguing. Even as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reluctantly acknowledged our history of genocide (PM Accepts Indigenous Inquiry’s Finding Of Genocide), Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was busy hectoring the Chinese on their human-rights record (Canada Calls On China To ‘Break The Silence’ On Tiananmen Square). A certain biblical quote concerning a beam in the eye comes to mind.

Dieter Neumann, Kemble, Ont.

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Chrystia Freeland couldn’t have chosen a worse time, amidst our current “frozen” relations with China, to interfere in its internal affairs. Her lecture poked the panda in the eye with a sharp stick, and its embassy was correct in objecting. Being a crusader for global human rights isn’t enough. Ms. Freeland must also be a diplomat.

Michael Robinson, Toronto

A new narrative: Destiny

Michael Powell writes in The New York Times: “I was ready for a new narrative. The Raptors were a hard-working team from the great north that captured the imagination of this splendidly multicultural region along the north shore of Lake Ontario. (Let’s get this out of the way: The burg has better bagels than New York. And its street hoops may be better than ours too.) Last night they even had a popular American president on hand in Barack Obama, a cool cat in a black leather jacket, and the Canadian crowd gave him a great roar and chants of ‘M.V.P.’ ”

This is heady stuff. Can Toronto and the Raptors keep up?

In 1967, the Maple Leafs took it all in hockey; 25 years later, in 1992, the Blue Jays were the Champions of all baseball.

But wait … with a little poetic licence, it was 26 years to their 1993 win. And what’s the difference between then and now?

Why, 26 years of course. Destiny may be on the Raps side!

Don Kawaja, King City, Ont.

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With all the hoopla about “Canada’s Team,” they should be called the Raptures!

Tom Singer, Burlington, Ont.

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