Dear Diary: Inside the thoughts of Sackville Heights Elementary School

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Virtually the whole of Canada was briefly united this week in its opposition to Sackville Heights Elementary School, a Nova Scotia school that asked veterans and service members attending its Remembrance Day assembly not to show up in uniform lest they scare students.

The demand has been retracted, after it was slammed by Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston and others, but urged any students afraid of the sight of military uniforms to get in touch with staff to make alternate arrangements.

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In Dear Diary, the National Post satirically re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Tristin Hopper takes a journey inside the thoughts of the Sackville Heights Elementary School.

Monday

Remembrance Day is always the most difficult part of the school calendar, although the Christian nationalist bacchanalia that is the Winter Holiday comes close.

While I can appreciate the human tragedy of young men being violently expended in the service of our nationâ€s various colonialist enterprises, the aesthetics of the event are an avalanche of problematic images. The singing of a national anthem that — within living memory — was an unapologetic swamp of gendered language. The playing of bagpipes; a settler-colonial siren stitched from the skin of murdered farm animals. The recitation of In Flanders Fields; a dissonant and toxic paean to masculine dominance.

That such rituals still exist in 21st-century Canada never fail to shock me.

Tuesday

One of the principles we hold most sacred here at Sackville Heights is the idea of positive self-affirmation. Student and staff should feel no stigma whatsoever to living their most authentic selves at all times.

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But veterans or service members need to be sensitive to the environment they are entering. In asking them to show up in civilian clothes, we are not asking them to renounce who they are. We are merely asking them to temporarily adopt an unrepresentative façade carefully tailored towards a conception of reality that would ultimately prefer they didnâ€t exist. This is Remembrance Day through an affirmative lens.

Wednesday

What people donâ€t understand is that Iâ€m not banning military uniforms for my own benefit. Iâ€m an adult; I have breathing exercises I can fall back upon should my personal space be assaulted by the sight of chevrons or the odour of laundry starch. But it is our duty to accommodate those of our foreign-born student population who have been traumatized by armed conflict, and will thus be emotionally triggered by any number of Remembrance Day symbols, be it the aggressive blood red points of the maple leaf, or the flesh-rending design of the poppy.

Thursday

Itâ€s right there in the name: Uniform. This is not an individualistic expression of oneâ€s core identity. It is rote submission to the collective. And in this, can anyone really tell me how a Canadian military uniform is all that different from that of a jackbooted fascist? Both of them celebrate conformity and unquestioning surrender to authority; each figure is just “following orders.â€

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All of this swirled through my mind as I finalized the text on a new extended land acknowledgement to be recited at the beginning of each instructional day. We are now proud to specify the land stolen not only to build this school, but the stolen land that yielded the lumber and other materials to construct it. And as per the latest CUPE inclusivity guidelines, weâ€ve been asked to refrain from the word “Canada,†“person†and “child.â€

Friday

Ultimately, what is most toxic about Remembrance Day is the core message that problems can be solved with violence. Are we at all surprised that gun crime is rising in this country when we ask our children to observe a yearly ritual of cheering mechanized warfare? To lionize those who fell in the service of delivering harm to others?

My heart hurts for all those young folx killed in the world wars. Not because I support their goal of organized violence, but because a more enlightened country would spend each Nov. 11 educating its children about the importance of understanding, compassion and the virtues of politely asking those who would do us harm to consider alternatives.

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