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John Mazerolle

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Canadians complain Remembrance Day being commemorated earlier every year

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So, we shouldn’t set fire to the flag and stomp on it?

OTTAWA "" Holiday-weary Canadians say they are fed up with the way Remembrance Day is being commemorated earlier every year.

"It used to be you didn't hear anything about Remembrance Day until the day," said Ottawa resident Marie Clark. "Then they started with the poppies earlier and earlier. This year I saw poppies on people at Halloween. That's just irritating."

Clark also complained that there are now multiple moments of silence, "not only at 11 a.m., but also before sporting events and unrelated public gatherings."

Clark added that if she hears Taps one more time, she's going to scream.

Proponents, meanwhile, say critics are missing the point.

"It's all about attitude," said widow Molly Rideout, who lost her husband Charlie to an IED in Afghanistan. "With the war going on, it's Remembrance Day all year round."

Doer gaffes on first day as ambassador by burning U.S. flag

WASHINGTON, D.C. "" Canadian Ambassador to the United States Gary Doer made a diplomatic gaffe on his first day when he set fire to the American Flag and stomped on it.

Doer, the former premier of Manitoba, was unaware of America's reverence toward its flag and chalked up the mistake to first-day jitters.

"America is a large, foreign country with more than 40 states, and it will take me a while to learn all the customs," said Doer, who set fire to the American flag in his office to see how fast it would burn.

"If I had known burning the flag, stomping on it, and putting out the last embers with my urine would offend the Americans, I never would have done it."

Doer said he expects to smooth things over with his U.S. counterparts in a lighthearted speech to the Washington D.C. Chamber of Commerce during which he will "poke fun" at steroids in baseball, the Oklahoma City bombing, and "all those wars they've lost."

Newspaper columnist makes sense of Fort Hood tragedy

SEATTLE, WA "" Jay Leson, a newspaper columnist for the Seattle Times, wrote a column yesterday that made perfect sense of the Fort Hood massacre, giving what had seemed to be a meaningless, random attack a weight, heft, and purpose that revealed the state of America today while maintaining the proper respect for the victims. The 800-word column had made people from as diverse a crowd as Glenn Beck to Maureen Dowd to Barack Obama see exactly what the attack meant, why it happened, and how it must never happen again.

"I thought at first that it was just some crazy guy, and then I thought maybe it was a Muslim conspiracy, but Leson's piece really made me see what I had been missing," said Times subscriber Debra Beam. "I hope he writes something about my grandson's death, because I can't make heads or tails of that either."

-E-mail: johnmazerolle@hotmail.com