ARMENIANS HONOUR THEIR PAINFUL PAST
Greg Mercer
Waterloo Record
e/339708
April 21 2008
Canada
It’s been 93 years since millions of Armenians were systematically
killed or dispersed by the soldiers of the Ottoman Empire.
But the descendants of survivors who gathered at the Armenian Community
Centre yesterday say they’re still waiting for justice.
They came together to mourn lives lost between 1915 and 1918, and to
talk about the politics of genocide — a term that is still contested
today, including inside some of Ontario’s school boards.
Canada officially considers what happened to the Armenians as
genocide. Turkey, the modern successor to the Ottoman Empire, does
not. It argues that many of the estimated 1.5 million Armenians
who died were killed by decidedly un-sinister causes, like disease
or starvation.
"What keeps the emotional and psychological wounds open is that the
Turkish government still denies this happened," said Harout Manougian,
a University of Waterloo engineering student. Manougian said his
great-grandfather, an evangelical pastor, was tortured and killed by
the Turks in 1915.
Cambridge MP Gary Goodyear said Turkey continues to lobby within
Canada in favour of its view of what happened to the Armenians so
many years ago. Most recently, the Toronto public school board was
pressured to drop references to the Armenian case in its course on
the history of genocide, he said.
"We cannot let our guard down on this issue," Goodyear told the crowd,
to loud applause. "There remains a tremendous amount of resistance."
Ontario became home to many survivors of the genocide. Georgetown
was the site of a school for 109 orphaned Armenian boys, who in the
1920s were trained as farm labourers.
Many of the few hundred Armenian-Canadian families who live in Waterloo
Region can trace their roots to victims of the genocide.
Yesterday, those descendants were adamant their history will never
be forgotten.
They crowded into the hall to sing the Armenian national anthem,
read poems and watch a documentary about the life of Turkey’s "hidden
Armenians." Those Armenians practise their Christianity in secret,
fearing reprisals from the Muslim majority.
On stage, the crowd laid flowers around a foam replica of a monument
to the genocide that stands in Armenia.
Outside, a choir stood beside a granite "mountain" marking the symbolic
stand made by a group of Armenians against the Turks, and sang requiems
for their "martyrs."
"We will never stop talking about the genocide," said Saro Sarmazian,
president of the local youth wing of Armenian national committee.
"We will simply never forget."
And they will fight efforts at every turn to rewrite historical texts,
they said.
"Let us remind the Turks that we will not sit idly by in Canada as they
try to manipulate history," said local business person Greg Buzbuzian,
master of ceremonies for the event.
He said his grandmother was left an orphan by Turkish soldiers, who
"annihilated" her family.
History professor Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill, the guest speaker,
told the crowd she grew up without grandparents, aunts or uncles. They
were all killed in the genocide, she said.
"The truth shall prevail," she said.
The walls of the hall were decorated with photocopies of Canadian
newspapers from the 1915, with stories reporting the Armenian
massacres.
But many here were wondering why it took so many years for the
severity of those killings to be officially recognized, as Canada’s
Senate did in 2002 and House of Commons did in 2004.