Thursday, August 23, 2007

Highway of Heroes

I blame David Frum for this--with his appallingly imaginationless coining of the term "Axis of Evil."

Now we're meant to swallow fat Joe Warmington's "Highway of Heroes"! The Highway of Heroes?! Is this really the best we could do? Aren't we supposed to have one of the finest military traditions in the world? Wasn't John McCrae one of our own? And we can't come up with something a little less kindergarten than Highway of Heroes? It's embarrassing!

I mean, by all means dedicate sections of the 401 (which I've just discovered--after nearly three decades of travel upon it--is called the MacDonald-Cartier Freeway ... and we wanted to call it what now?), by all means, I say, dedicate sections of the highway to the honour of the various regiments fighting in Afghanistan, or name each of its overpasses after one of the dead or whatever. But Highway of Heroes? Hell, even Highway of the Fallen has more of a McCrae-esque feel to it, and that sucks!

It seems to me that if we're going to bother to call a stretch of the 401 something as fatuous, facile and faceless as the Highway of Heroes then we should go whole hog and start calling the Taliban Cobra.