by Eric Unger

HAVE YOU watched the movie, Hacksaw Ridge? It’s worth a look, I think.

Having viewed this film about an American WWII conscientious objector I wondered if Canada had had a similar soldier who refused to kill yet served in war. Then while in the doctor’s waiting room the other day I came upon this short article here in Reader’s Digest about a Korean War veteran and CO.

This excerpt from the story really caught my eye:

After Pelletier was honourably discharged on August 13, 1953… He married Rosaline in the spring of 1964 and they settled in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and had four children: three sons and a daughter. When the kids were young, Pelletier brought them to Remembrance Day ceremonies and gave them mock parachute lessons in the basement, but he told them very little about the war. This dismayed their second oldest, Louis-Marie, who, as a child, was anxious for details of his father’s courageous exploits in Korea. One day, in a bid to find out more, he asked his dad which side had been victorious. “We wanted so much for him to tell us it was him—that he had won the war,” says Louis-Marie, laughing. “But he told us it was the bankers who’d really won. [emphasis mine] What a boring answer! Still, he wasn’t wrong.”