Of some 120 Canadian men and others with Cdn. connections awarded the Medal of Honor, Douglas' story is one on my favorites. His story and updates have appeared often in this space.
But, like over 100 books on the Medal of Honor in my personal library, it too is written by a male. Though no criticism of the book is implied.
It came into my possession a week ago as a gift for a close friend from Victoria who is an avid follower of these blogs. During her recent trip to visit family in the state of Massachusetts, she dragged them into many a book story to find this book for me. It is destined to become one of my prized autographed books.
But that said, the time has long since past, that the preservation of the status quo is mandatory. Heroes are in fact not gender-specific. The day that the men start to wake up and realize this will be the day when they will hopefully pick up their quills and start telling our grade school children and more that the stories of thousands of female heroes are still waiting their fair treatment in the history of print.
This blog, now within a few numbers of 500 strong, has been telling you stories about female heroes dating back to the 2nd month of the blog's publishing on the net over 7 years ago.
Regular readers have read of Doctor Mary Walker the only female recipient of the medal, or so I thought, till telling the story of Juliet Ann Ope Walker back in January of 2013. It is searchable on this website.
Regular readers have also been told and retold stories about the famous Person's Case, the Persons' Awards and Women's History Month in Canada and the US. Stories have appeared here about the bravery of three Canadian women who earned the first ever US Purple Heart, the first ever Army Distinguished Service Medal and the first ever Navy Cross in US history.
Speaking of women history and Mary Walker, it was just recently learned that the very day she she was awarded the Medal of Honor, after being approved just before the
Lincoln assassination was on October 18th. A most historic date in Canadian women's history.
Yet another story in this space told you about the first ever government funded monument to Mary Elizabeth Crowley, just 12 years old, back in 1870 at Pugwash Nova Scotia. Others told of 14 year old Madeleine Jarret back in 1692 and of course of Laura Secord's warning that the
Americans were coming back in 1813. All are searchable on this site.
Jumping forward to most recent blogs, I highlighted an important feature of the recently unveiled Afghanistan memorial here in Victoria BC. But I fear that the five names mentioned, all Canadian women, will be missed by most who view this very sad but beautiful memorial.
We need to take gigantic steps to see that across the country we take steps to see more and more monuments, buildings, roads, geographic features and more named in honour of our women heroes.
It is their time. In fact it had been all all along, and each of us has allowed it to continue.
I shall return in not 2 weeks... but one to share with you some news I also just received from my friend's US trip about recent efforts to acknowledge female heroes... and folks... it is impressive.
Please join me then.
cheers,
Bart