This is the national forgetting that occurs on Remembrance Day. Writing in 1995, John Ralston Saul cites the "generally agreed statistics ... that some 1000 soldiers, and 5000 civilians, die per day, every day, for a total of over two million deaths per year, for a total of over 75 million deaths over the past 35 years." Or, taking another estimate, "50 million people have been killed by war since the peace began in 1945."¹ The experience of war is not remote for many thousands of people who have arrived in this country in the last 5 decades: 37 500 Hungarians in 1956–57, 11 000 Czechs in 1968–69, 6000 Chileans in 1973, 9000 Indochinese from 1975 to 1978 and 60 000 more in 1979–80.² In 1999 the top 10 source countries for refugees in Canada were Bosnia–Herzegovina, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Croatia, Pakistan, Iraq, Algeria and India.³ For the year 2000 Canada was committed to accept up to 29 300 displaced persons and Geneva Convention refugees (people at risk of persecution in their own state for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or political or social affiliation). In 1998, 22 644 refugees became permanent residents.⁴

Thus the face of Canada is altered as lines of interstate and, increasingly, intrastate conflict are drawn and redrawn around the globe. And, through immigrants and refugees, the horrifically inventive abuses of modern warfare enter into the collective memory of our society. Or do they? These experiences are painful to convey, difficult to share. Physicians who work with victims of torture, or who have recent refugees in their practice, know how painful for newcomers is the disconnect between brutal memories and the relatively innocent, pleasure-seeking culture where they have found refuge.