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Illustration Sunday: The Highway of Heroes

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2007_08_26_IS_Highway.jpg
The section of Highway 401 between Trenton and Toronto will be renamed The Highway of Heroes in honour of Canada’s fallen soldiers. Crowds have been gathering on overpasses along this route to pay tribute to the fallen as they are driven from CFB Trenton to Toronto. The new designation joins a list of names for the 401, which includes The King’s Highway No. 401, The Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, and The Leslie M. Frost Thruway (which was approved but never enacted).
Illustration by Kevin McBride.

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Comments

  • David Elliott

    This proposed re-naming has the smell of Christian right Republican patriotism written all over it. Such a name is worthy only of repressive regimes and dictatorships.
    Thirty years from now, nobody will call it that name and it will be re-named back to the MacDonald-Cartier freeway.
    There’s a generally accepted 30-years’ rule before commemoration by renaming takes place. This allows all the skeletons to come out and the proper historical perspective to emerge.
    In the 1970s, many schools, libraries and streets and community centres were re-named after Richard Nixon’s embarrassment of Watergate.
    In their zeal to honour Nixon, they had named places with his name. After the Watergate affair crippled the nation, the re-naming back to the original title started in earnest.
    By the way, remember Stalingrad? Leningrad?
    Burma? Rangoon?
    I rest my case.

  • David Topping

    David E., as much as I’m a little ambivalent about the naming, I think that citing Stalingrad and the like completely undermines any kind of rational argument you are putting forward against the thing. Canada is not a “repressive regime” or “dictatorship,” nor is the renaming of a stretch of highway in honour of our country’s armed forces an indication of that. If hindsight makes the name seem stupid, it will have probably end up having more in common with Mel Lastman Square than Stalingrad.

  • guest

    Sheesh… The Highway 416 from Ottawa to the 401 is already called a Veterans Memorial Highway

  • guest

    kevin mcbride, i like your editorial illustrations :)

  • Kevin McBride

    Highway 100/Airport Road in London was renamed Veterans Memorial Parkway last year.
    Thanks, Guest #2!

  • rek

    Do those who die in battle count as veterans? Because that’s what the Heroes stretch is for, and why it starts at AFB Trenton (where the bodies arrive).
    Usually I detest the way the h-word is thrown around (died on the job? you’re a hero!) but this I don’t really mind.
    It’s also not the Righteous Afghanistan Invasion Heroes’ Highway, so I don’t see the need for a waiting period.

  • DanielQuinn

    Maybe I’m being irrational, but this kind of thing makes me absolutely furious. For starters, the term “hero” is thrown around far too much and (at least in my opinion) should not be assigned to just anyone who dies in the line of duty.
    These soldiers are Our Honoured Dead, people who died because they chose to fight for Canada and Canada sent them into a warzone. That’s both respectable and honourable, even remarkable… but is this heroism? No. This sort of renaming campaign just supports a propaganda machine that works to convince people that war is glorious, even righteous — a lie so far from the truth it borders on propaganda.
    And if that doesn’t piss you off, how ’bout the thought that of all the things in this country we could attribute to our soldiers, we choose a stretch of grey pavement. What a terrible way to honour these people.

  • guest

    Another great illustration. Thank you Kevin!

  • AnarchX

    bad bad idea. but people will go along with it based on a purely emotional reaction.
    i agree that ‘heroes’ is being thrown arond wayyyy to easily.
    i detest the fact that everyone keeps refering to the mission in afghanistan as ‘peacekeeping’ when in reality it is anything BUT. it’s a U.S.-ed invasion pure and simple. there are no blue U.N. helmets involed. it is not peacekeeping at all!