Last night I woke up with the dread of an armoured vehicle in Aurora\u2019s Peace Park.
\nI have not had nightmares since the mid-seventies, when my regular nightmares about war stopped.
\nWhile I grew up in a village, towards the end of the Second World War, as a four year old, I lived with my grandmother, my Oma, in my birth city in Germany, in Bremen, because of a middle ear operation that could only be performed there.
\nI was in Bremen for four months while bombing was a regular occurrence. We were in and out of the apartment building\u2019s basement and the neighbourhood bunker, depending on the severity of the bombing and the frequency of the siren.
\nThe windows were always darkened at night.
\nThere was a constant threat that my Oma\u2019s building would be next.
\nMy nightmares were related to the war experiences in that big city.
\nWhen Germany was re-militarized, I left Germany, to Canada \u2013 where military service was not mandatory.
\nNow our Council has decided to place the ultimate glorification of war into our Peace Park \u2013 an armoured war vehicle.
\nDuring the last year I walked by that park a few times, feeling good about that oasis of nature, right along Yonge Street. But now, if that war vehicle is installed I shall be avoiding such walks and shall use Allaura Blvd to get to meetings at McDonalds.
\nI don\u2019t think I am the only citizen of Aurora who has come from a war torn country.
\nWhat our Mayor and Councillors don\u2019t appear to realize is the extent to which a person\u2019s mind is affected by the war\u2019s violence. I don\u2019t think any Council Member is old enough to have had such experience.
\nI certainly am not looking forward to being reminded of war by seeing an armoured war vehicle right here in Aurora.
\nIs it meant to glorify the successes of egomaniacs?
\nWhile I am hopeful that nightmares will not restart, I did not like waking up to thoughts that involve the military and wars.
\nThere must be a way to reverse that decision.<\/p>\n
Klaus Wehrenberg Last night I woke up with the dread of an armoured vehicle in Aurora\u2019s Peace Park. I have not had nightmares since the mid-seventies, when my regular nightmares about war stopped. While I grew up in a village, towards the end of the Second World War, as a four year old, I lived with my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-opinion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAurora<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"