Winnipeg Free Press > Opinion > Columnists

David O’Brien

About David O’Brien:

David O'Brien is a Free Press columnist.

  • Good Samaritan, or cold killer?

    The case of Col. Russell Williams, charged in a series of sex crimes and slayings, is not expected to shed much light on military affairs, but it will likely spur some discussion, as it already has, about the nature of evil and the dark side of humanity. But unless there is evidence senior officers ignored warning signs something was amiss, the military should not find itself on trial, too.

    The military establishment, however, is not getting off so easy in another alleged murder involving a Canadian army officer. It's a case that has the potential of providing significant insight into the nature of combat stress and the hard and inhuman choices that are made in battle. It may also provide a rare glimpse into aspects of a war that have been largely unseen and unreported at home.

    View Full Column | 12/02/2010 1:00 AM | 0

  • A rebel with too many causes

    It was sometime in 1971 that I met my first radical. The details are hazy today, but it happened in a lecture hall at the University of Winnipeg, where someone was speaking to a large group of students about something that must have seemed interesting at the time. Then, on the sloped stairway of the lecture hall, a scruffy-looking man with a Germanic accent interrupted the speaker and offered his own views on whatever it was that had brought us together.

    View Full Column | 28/01/2010 1:00 AM | 1

  • Canada's warehouses on wings

    The C-17 Globemaster looks like an airplane, but it is so enormous -- 300 metric tons fully loaded -- that it seems incredible that its wings can actually lift it off the ground. I boarded one of the monsters on a Canadian military base in Southwest Asia last month on my way home following a tour of Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan.

    It's the same rapid transport jet that some critics dismissed as a vanity project when the military made a request for the massive bird about 10 years ago, but world events have vindicated the decision to purchase four C-17s for $1.5 billion. Two of them are lending their weight for the relief effort in Haiti.

    View Full Column | 19/01/2010 1:00 AM | 2

  • Hard to report the real facts in a deadly place

    My wife received a phone call late Wednesday afternoon from a Winnipeg radio journalist wanting to know if I had returned from Afghanistan. The caller said a report had just moved about a western Canadian journalist being killed in Kandahar city. I returned from Afghanistan about three weeks ago, but the call still upset my wife because of the image that what happened to Michelle Lang could have happened to me.

    View Full Column | 31/12/2009 1:00 AM | 1

  • A 21st-century war in a primitive land

    KANDAHAR AIRFIELD — It’s too dangerous to travel more than a few hundred metres outside the perimeter of this sprawling military encampment, home to an estimated 30,000 coalition soldiers and civilians, without extensive protection. I was one of seven journalists who were supposed to visit Kandahar City, just 16 kilometres north of here, during a military-sponsored media tour, but the plans were repeatedly cancelled because the special transportation needed for the short hop -- either a Chinook helicopter or armoured convoy -- was unavailable. The demands of military operations at the time were too intense.

    View Full Column | 12/12/2009 3:20 AM | 4

  • It's a hostile environment, all right

    KANDAHAR AIRFIELD -- The commander of the Canadian air force in Afghanistan, like most senior officers in the theatre, is not content to sit behind a desk barking out orders. Col. Christian Drouin frequently pilots a Griffon helicopter in operations, flying shotgun for the heavier and more cumbersome Chinook. Conventional military doctrine says it is irresponsible for senior leaders to risk their lives at the front, but ranking officers here, including Canadian Task Force commander Brig-Gen. Dan Menard, are routinely in the field to assess the situation and meet the troops.

    View Full Column | 5/12/2009 1:00 AM | 0

  • The dust of war

    KANDAHAR AIRFIELD -- I've been wondering lately about Jason Jacques. I've never met the man, but I've been looking at his name every night before I go to bed and again when I wake up. That's because it's written in the dust on the bed frame above my lower bunk in the quarters I share with another journalist. There are other names, too, but Jacques' is directly above my head. I can imagine him reaching up in a moment of boredom and scrawling his name to mark his existence. I was going to add my name to the tableau, but decided the exercise would just bring dust down upon me.

    View Full Column | 4/12/2009 1:00 AM | 1

  • Weakened Taliban 'achievable'

    KANDAHAR AIRFIELD -- The new general in charge of Canadian operations in the critical Kandahar region says he's confident he can weaken the Taliban in his theatre of operations within a year. "It is achievable," Brig.-Gen. Dan Ménard said Sunday in his first interview since taking command two weeks ago. "Defeat (of the Taliban) is not realistic, but what we need to do is marginalize the insurgency."

    View Full Column | 30/11/2009 1:00 AM | 2

  • Deadly serious

    David O'Brien is travelling with a small group of Canadian journalists to Afghanistan as part of a tour organized by the Defence Department. This is his first report.

     

    View Full Column | 25/11/2009 1:00 AM | 6

  • A history of remembrance

    In 1923, a temporary war memorial that stood at Portage and Main in front of the Bank of Montreal was torn down. The makeshift cenotaph had been erected soon after the Great War in an outburst of emotion for the literally thousands of Winnipeg boys killed or injured in the war.

    It was one of thousands of memorials across Canada and around the world built by citizens aghast at the bloodshed and sacrifice that had so recently ended. Manitoba, too, from its capital to its smallest villages, was determined not to forget.

    View Full Column | 7/11/2009 1:00 AM | 0

  • The German Question answered

    THE fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago is frequently regarded as one of those rare watershed moments in history that mark the end of one era and the beginning of another. In this case, the new era was popularly regarded as superior to the previous one, even if it was beset with uncertainty over the future of Russia.

    It turns out, however, that some European leaders were worried not about Russia, but about Germany instead. They feared a reunited Germany would reignite all of the old strategic questions that had plagued Europe for 1,000 years.

    View Full Column | 7/11/2009 1:00 AM | 0

  • Thanksgiving -- as Canadian as pirates

    My boss asked me the other day if I would write something about Thanksgiving. My first reaction was, Gobble Gobble, are you kidding? He shrugged his shoulders and disappeared into his office, but I decided to give it some thought anyway.

    After a quick look at some online sources and a few dusty old encyclopedias in the Free Press library, I discovered that Canadian Thanksgiving actually has an interesting and controversial history. Did you know, for example, that the first Thanksgiving celebration in North America was held in Canada, not the United States as many of us have been led to believe?

    View Full Column | 11/10/2009 1:00 AM | 1

  • The day Canada declared war

    I often reflect on my family's military adventures, particularly on important anniversaries. So lately I've been wondering about the conversation that went on at the dinner table 70 years ago this month at 530 Toronto Street in Winnipeg, my dad's boyhood home.

    On Sept. 10, 1939, a Sunday, Canada declared war on Germany, a decision that altered the lives of all Canadians, whether they served or not.

    View Full Column | 10/09/2009 1:00 AM | 0

  • Museum of ideas, not of atrocity and insult

    In the early days of planning for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, when the concept was still being developed by the Asper family, I told one of their executives that I was sure the Irish story would figure prominently in the new facility and would, no doubt, have its own permanent exhibit. I was joking, of course, but the executive wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t even smiling. The grim poker face that greeted my lame attempt at humour said it all, namely that deciding which stories to tell, who would tell them and how, was going to be a painful exercise. The fear was that every group in Canada and beyond would demand its own pride of place in the museum, or at least a corner office.

    View Full Column | 24/05/2009 10:54 AM | 12

  • Museum of ideas, not of atrocity and insult

    In the early days of planning for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, when the concept was still being developed by the Asper family, I told one of their executives that I was sure the Irish story would figure prominently in the new facility and would, no doubt, have its own permanent exhibit. I was joking, of course, but the executive wasn't laughing. He wasn't even smiling. The grim poker face that greeted my lame attempt at humour said it all, namely that deciding which stories to tell, who would tell them and how, was going to be a painful exercise. The fear was that every group in Canada and beyond would demand its own pride of place in the museum, or at least a corner office.

    Clearly, if that was the expectation, there was going to be a lot of disappointment, particularly if groups like the Irish demanded some room in the castle.

    View Full Column | 24/05/2009 1:00 AM | 0

  • ‘Something very special’

    IN December 1935, the single mother of a 12-yea-r­old boy wrote a letter to the editor of the Free Press to complain that there was no place for children to play in her neighbourhood near Central Park. The front street was unsafe, she said, police didn’t allow kids in the back lanes, and residents didn’t want them in their backyards. What was a poor mother to do?

    View Full Column | 3/05/2009 9:02 AM | 0

  • Jewish suffering is unique in history

    I attended a Holocaust Memorial Day event Tuesday in front of the Holocaust Monument on the Manitoba legislative grounds. Naturally, it was hard not to get emotional, particularly during a wonderful performance of a segment of I Believe by the Zane Zalis Singers. Music has a way of stirring the emotions.

    Remembrance Day ceremonies on Nov. 11 also bring out the Kleenex, as do other events that recall the tragedies of the past. But are all tears created equal? Is Jewish suffering, for example, more meaningful than the misery of soldiers who died of starvation and brutality in Japanese prison camps, or of Ukrainians who perished in the Great Famine of 1931-32?

    View Full Column | 22/04/2009 1:00 AM | 5

  • Things you don't do in polite society

    At some point in the evolution of polite society, it became unacceptable for people to fart in public. I don't know when that was exactly, but if you really need to know, you can try looking it up in the Free Press online archives, not that there's any guarantee the answer is there. What we do know for sure, however, is that there was a time when public flatulence was no more noteworthy than, say, sneezing is today, providing you cover yourself properly and excuse yourself.

    View Full Column | 15/03/2009 1:00 AM | 1

  • Bad smile aside, Paul Martin is now shining

    Everything might be different, if only he knew how to smile. Former prime minister Paul Martin was in Winnipeg Tuesday to promote an aboriginal education program he started when he was forcibly retired from office three years ago.

    View Full Column | 26/02/2009 1:00 AM | 2

  • IQ, stupidity and the mysteries of city hall

    When I was in Grade 2, the teacher told my mother I was retarded and she recommended that I repeat the year. My mom was surprised and upset to find out I was "retarded," but she asked the teacher to give me a break, and I was promoted to the third grade. I didn't find out about the conversation until Grade 8 or thereabouts, by which time I assume I was performing closer to normal. I guess my mother thought I should know that I was once considered stupid by a person trained to make such observations.

    Today, many years later, I find myself wondering: Am I stupid? Not because of what happened in Grade 2, but because I sometimes have great difficulty understanding what's going on at city hall, even though I worked there for about four years as a reporter. For example, it was reported recently that the city and the province are in a funding flap over this year's budget. It was all about whether some money was recycled, used, new, real or metaphysical, which is something you have to be smart to understand.

    View Full Column | 19/02/2009 1:00 AM | 1

  • The endless battle of 1759

    It probably didn't take too long for Italians to forgive the Germanic tribes for the various sackings of Rome that occurred some 1,600 years ago. In fact, they've already got over the Nazi occupation and devastation of their country, which occurred just 60 years ago, but some historical grudges can last a very long time, indeed. The British conquest of New France 250 years ago during the Seven Years War is such an example.

    As every Canadian should know, the central battle in that campaign occurred in 1759, when British Gen. James Wolfe defeated France's Marquis de Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham near Quebec City. French-speaking Quebecers have never got over the loss. For them, it was almost as if, as a character in a Leonard Cohen novel says: "The English have stolen our history!"

    View Full Column | 13/02/2009 1:00 AM | 1

  • Obituaries —the long and the short of them

    IT’S probably not known when the first obituary was published, but the shortest death notice in history may have been written in Winnipeg.

    View Full Column | 8/02/2009 8:10 AM | 0

  • All things being equal

    Harry Truman once famously complained he needed a "one-armed economist," instead of the two-fisted variety ("on the one hand, on the other") that couldn't produce clear policy directions, particularly when they finished every piece of advice with the standard phrase: "Other things being equal."

    Economists have sparked some of the great debates in history, as well as some of the best jokes. (One of my favourites was the one about a guy who asked an economist for her phone number and got an estimate in return.) But they have not been able to solve the great financial crises of the past, including the Depression of the 1930s, which was already on the wane by 1933 -- before Roosevelt's New Deal -- but which didn't fully end until the growth in military spending and the outbreak of the Second World War, which even economists cannot claim as their idea.

    View Full Column | 29/01/2009 1:00 AM | 1

  • Our soldiers' hands are pretty clean

    Mark Grimsley is a professor of history at Ohio State University today, but in an earlier life he was a soldier who underwent basic training at Fort Sill, Okla. According to his blog, warhistorian.org, the recruits were taught a variety of rowdy songs that "were and are unprintable." But not this one, which was sung to the tune of Jesus Loves the Little Children:

     

    View Full Column | 8/01/2009 1:00 AM | 0

  • We are all members of minority groups

    I wasn't really looking for another hard-luck story when I boarded an airplane in Los Angeles for the trip home following a media tour of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. The museum is loaded with sadness and stories of suffering, although it also trumpets heroes and tales of hope, but maybe it was plain old serendipity that led me to sit next to an elderly woman whose entire life was shaped by intolerance.

    She had a weary, life-worn look, but perhaps it was just the fatigue that affects most long-distance travellers. We struck up a conversation and she told me she was on her way home to St. Paul after visiting her daughter in L.A. Being a naturally nosy and curious person, I asked her where she was born.

    View Full Column | 30/11/2008 12:00 AM | 1

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