E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Draft-dodger tribute facing abandonment
A day after WorldNetDaily's story publicizing a proposed monument to honor draft dodgers from the Vietnam War, there is word the project itself is facing abandonment. The bronze tribute slated for Nelson, British Columbia, sparked outrage in both the U.S. and Canada, and now the town's online community bulletin board indicates the project is expected to be dropped:
Administrator's note:
I have been informed by two good sources that the proposal to build a "monument to honour draft dodgers from the Vietnam War" has been abandoned.

THERE WILL BE NO MONUMENT.
An announcement to that effect will be made later this week.
City officials have now confirmed the monument will not be constructed. The message on Nelson's bulletin board continued:
This issue has caused a lot of frustration and division. This website is no longer able to serve its purpose, and has become a discussion about this one topic. The discussion is no longer relevant. The proposed monument was spearheaded by an American living in Canada as a landed immigrant. The idea was digusting to myself and 90 percent of other Canadians. The media did a great job of blowing the whole issue out of proportion. Now the proposal is dead. Any Americans who didn't like the idea would do well to shut up about it and build their own monument to antagonize Canadians.

The confident aren't so easily enflamed.
The "landed immigrant" in charge of the project is Isaac Romano, who was very positive when the project was first made public. "This will mark the courageous legacy of Vietnam War resisters and the Canadians who helped them resettle in this country during that tumultuous era," he said. Mayor David Elliot also seemed delighted when a press conference was held announcing plans to build the monument. ''I think it's the right place for it,'' he told the Nelson Daily News. ''We have a lot of open-minded people in this area and certainly people who are conscious of the efforts that happened in the Vietnam War.''

His office was subsequently flooded with negative reaction, and he's now singing a slightly different tune. "I made an innocent comment, off the cuff,'' Elliot told the National Post. ''Yes, I am a peace activist. But I wasn't speaking as mayor when I said I liked the idea. I wasn't even talking about the sculpture, which I don't support. We don't have a lot of public art here.''
Posted by: Super Hose 2004-09-29
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=44528