A rchive Date
[ 28-02-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/burnett.html
Giving hope to the doves
By THANE BURNETT - Toronto Sun
February 26, 2003
This is not all about 92-year-old Myrtle Alles. If it is, it'll mean war with her. And that's a battle I can't win.
Last weekend, the retired school teacher joined other Cambridge-area residents in a peace rally - a link in a widening human chain of opposition to an American-led war in Iraq. In the cold and the drizzle of the day, Myrtle protested beside 50 other, mostly young, peace activists.
But it was her impressive age and loud, heartfelt plea - delivered through a megaphone - that caught the attention of her local newspaper. The headline above the story, on B1 of The Record, read: "'For God's sake, stop the nonsense,' 92-year-old anti-war protester says."
The story, among a grab-bag of anti-war marches that are happening almost every weekend, stopped me as a reader. Even those who don't agree with her cause, couldn't help but be impressed - or at least intrigued - by a 92-year-old woman taking to the streets to stop bombs falling half a world away.
But that's not what Myrtle wanted. That's not why she showed up at all, she explains to me. "If I had known it was going to be all about me (in the newspaper), I wouldn't have gone," she says. "This issue is too important to be about me, or any other single person."
Before I go on, with respect to most 92-year-olds, Myrtle Alles is not like most 92-year-olds. Her positions and arguments and opinions and mindset are water clear and unsinkable. Her delivery, and voice of authority, I suspect, are not much different than when she stood before her students. Though, in those years, she wouldn't have dared talk politics with her young charges.
Now, she's free to speak her mind. And I feel like I'm nine years old when she sets me straight on my sometimes twisted logic.
After the rally, she became concerned. And not just of war. The thought that she would become a spectacle - a senior on parade - has her worried. She is only, reluctantly, talking to me now.
"I am a very private person - I am not flattered by seeing my name in print," she says. "I feel I may have made a mistake - I diverted attention away from the real message."
She would rather I talk to the politicians who were at the rally, or 17-year-old organizer, Justin Williams.
The old are not the ones who will have to fight, or inherit the aftermath, she points out. She believes the growing movement is about the issue of war - not the personalities of those opposed to it.
TAKING THE FRONT LINES
This is where we disagree.
Over the past few weeks, the peace movement has gained remarkable strength, not from the usual activists, mollifying youth and sound-byte eager politicians who raise an olive branch, but from the mothers, fathers and 92-year-old retired school teachers who you may not expect to be standing on the front lines.
It's not Hollywood actors like George Clooney or Sean Penn who have really threatened the champions of war - it's been small-town names who've never seen ink. "I am not anti-American, nor am I a pacifist," Myrtle tells me. "I am not against war at any cost."
She has seen more than most. World War II was the only avenue left, she concedes, after explaining Germany's social hideousness should have been understood long before it got as far as it did. She lost nine friends and relatives during that war.
"I remember some of the (human) wrecks who came home after that," she recalls. "I value human life, and don't want to see that again. "Saddam Hussein may be a very bad man - he's not the only one in the world."
I ask her what people said to her, after the rally.
"Most of my friends said they wished I had told them I was going - they would have gone," she explains. "They surprised me."
Which is what this column is really about.
Not about one person - not about Myrtle Alles - but of the ability of that one person to make a few others pause and think. Maybe step toward a megaphone on a cold day. To try to stop a new war.
The result is what now frustrates the hawks, and gives some hope to the doves.
Reach Thane Burnett at thane.burnett@tor.sunpub.com or 416-947-2444 Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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