On Norman Bethune...

"The controversial comrade Bethune was used by Mao Zedong -
as a 'moral model' of unquestioning obedience to the Communist party.
Bethune was someone the contemporary Western World would call 'a useful idiot'.
He more or less took leave of his moral compass and senses when
he went to China and threw himself into the Communist cause.
It was well established by the late 1930s that
the Chinese Communists were under Moscow's thumb and
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had already killed millions of his own people
and set up the Gulag labour camps.
There was little doubt that what Mao planned for China
was what Stalin had planned for the Soviet Union."

CANADA PULLS RICKSHAW FOR RED CHINA

When the new Bethune museum was unveiled last week,
Canada's Minister of the Treasury showed up at the event in a rickshaw —
a Mao-era mode of Chinese transportation. Sorta cheesy.
But then the loudspeakers came on.
And, at this government of Canada event,
the Chinese national anthem was played.
The Communist Party of China officials were beaming.

Notice, in the photo above, it's an Anglo-Saxon Canadian male -- not a Chinese-immigrant-to-Canada male -- pulling the high-ranking Canadian politician in the rickshaw to the Mao-worshipping shrine to Communist Bethune. No doubt that's another reason the officals from Communist China were beaming (and laughing their heads off behind our backs, no doubt, just like those statues in Vancouver where a descendent of Bethune is the mayor):

Community embraces Chinese laughter
Globe & Mail, April 18, 2012

A woman photographs one of the 14 Amazing-Laughter sculptures by artist Yu Minjun at Morton Park in Vancouver. The Vancouver Park Board voted unanimously to keep the bronze work following an overwhelming community support in favour of the decision. The sculptures were installed in 2009 -- temporarily -- as part of the Vancouver Biennale. The Biennale Foundation is now working to raise the $1.5-million purchase price, lowered by the artist from the original $5-million price tag.
It's amazing, really, that Canada has stooped so low as to be the laughing stock of the Communist Chinese, the butt of their jokes, their "useful idiots". ~ Jackie Jura
watch Canada's Minister of Treasury arrive in rickshaw (to dedicate new national Communist museum), TorontoSun, Jul 11, 2012
watch Canada Treasury head say "I'm not a Communist" (while donating taxpayer millions to Communists), TorontoSun, Jul 11, 2012
Canada’s shrine of shame
Norman Bethune supported Mao Zedong’s Communist ideology — so now we build a memorial to him?
by Ezra Levant, Toronto Sun, Jul 14, 2012
The Canadian government has not yet provided a cent to the proposed memorial in Ottawa for the victims of communism. Not a cent, though millions of Canadians came here fleeing from Communist regimes.
But the government of Canada found $2.5 million to build a sparkling new museum in Tony Clement’s riding [member of parliament appointed to cabinet-level position heading the Federal Treasury Board], dedicated to the Communist sympathizer, Norman Bethune. Bethune was such a communist extremist he literally left Canada twice to go to war alongside Communists, once in Spain, then in China, where he met up with Mao Zedong. Mao is the worst mass murderer in world history, killing more than Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin. Combined. That’s who Bethune dedicated his life to. And that’s who the government of Canada spent $2.5 million building a shrine to....
The Chinese national anthem was written by a poet named Tian Han, who, like Bethune, was what the Communists call a “useful idiot”. That is, he was only too happy to volunteer to provide propaganda cover for Mao’s killing machine. Trouble with being a poet and a dramatist though, is he thought for himself a bit too much for the likes of his hero, Mao. So, in Mao’s Cultural Revolution — where anyone suspected of harbouring dissident views was publicly denounced in a national frenzy of snitching and condemnation — Tian Han was publicly condemned and arrested and sent to a hard labour camp, where he died. That’s the anthem’s story: A war song, exalting violence, written by a naive fool who was soon himself killed by Communist violence. That’s the tune that was playing from the loudspeakers when Clement cut the ribbon at our new national Communist museum. That’s the song that’s ringing in the ears of Canadian victims of communism, who have been told that they can’t get support for their memorial, because the federal budget is too lean.
The government claims this is all a tourism idea, to draw Chinese visitors to, uh, Gravenhurst, Ont. Because apparently Canada’s Rocky Mountains and Great Lakes and a thousand other world-class natural and man-made attractions lack the pizzazz of a Communist museum. So that’s why we did what Mao liked to do — we revised history, whitewashing the brutality of Mao and his Canadian cheerleader, Bethune.
We’re not at war with China — though they wage an economic war against us, stealing $1 billion a month in technology and industrial secrets, according to CSIS. We’re not in a trade war with them either — we fill our Walmarts with their junk. This isn’t a call for a boycott. It’s just a call for some national self-respect — and the recognition that Mao was history’s greatest murderer, and Bethune was an accomplice.

Canada Tweaks Communist Brand to Build Bridges With China
by John Allemang, Globe & Mail, Jul 11, 2012
The man Tony Clement will celebrate on Wednesday was a restless surgeon, a rowdy womanizer, a stubborn renegade and a passionate communist. Norman Bethune, who died while tending Mao Zedong’s troops in 1939, is an unlikely Conservative hero. But Bethune’s ideological impurity is offset by his value to Ottawa’s strategy in China – where the colourful Canadian expatriate is a national hero, memorialized by Mao himself for his “spirit of absolute selflessness.” This powerful bilateral connection helps explain why the Treasury Board President will honour a Marxist martyr when he opens a new $2.5-million visitors’ centre at Bethune Memorial House, in Gravenhurst, Ont. – a popular Parks Canada attraction that lures 15,000 visitors, mostly mainland Chinese and recent immigrants, to the wealthy resort town....
Chinese tourism in Canada is expected to increase, now that Canada has been given approved-destination status by the People’s Republic. But for now, most visitors to Bethune Memorial House – purchased by the Canadian government in 1973 shortly after Pierre Trudeau’s landmark official visit to a formerly isolationist nation – are nostalgic Chinese nationals or Canadians of Chinese descent who regard the doctor’s birthplace more as a shrine than an interpretative site, Graceland crossed with the Vimy Memorial, with maybe a touch of Green Gables. “Some people don’t come here to learn,” site manager Scott Davidson said. “They just want to stand in the bedroom where he was born. It’s been tricky to figure out the best way to present the experience.” The new 3,500-square-foot visitors’ centre has been tasked with the job of explaining Bethune in a more complex way – helping Chinese visitors understand his transition from comfortable Gravenhurst to wartime China, and winning over Canadians who don’t yet appreciate why the Marxist medic should be seen as a local hero. “We’re trying to reach Canadians who might be interested in his humanitarian spirit and ideals” Mr. Davidson said. “We’re saying, ‘Come here and recharge your social batteries’”.
Canada PM backs shrine for Communist Chinese
Toronto Sun, Jul 11, 2012
The Prime Minister's Office is standing behind a $2.5 million taxpayer-funded tourist trap dedicated to Canadian Maoist supporter Norman Bethune.The memorial house in Gravenhurst, Ont., 170 kilometres north of Toronto - Bethune's birthplace - is a popular destination for Chinese business and government delegations, and draws some 1,000 visitors a day during high season.

But Queen's University's Bruce Gilley, an expert on China's politics, cautioned that while there's no harm in commemorating Bethune's legacy as a dedicated surgeon and inventor, it shouldn't be sugar-coated.... Bethune was born in 1890 and became a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of Canada in 1935, shortly before travelling to Spain to work as a military doctor during the Spanish Civil War. In 1938 he left for China, treating Communist troops under Mao before developing a fatal blood infection. He died in 1939.
Treasury Board of Canada is a Cabinet committee of the Queen's Privy Council of Canada. It was established in 1867 and given statutory powers in 1869. Tony Clement is the current President. The Treasury Board is responsible for accountability and ethics, financial, personnel and administrative management, comptrollership, approving regulations and most Orders-in-Council. The formal role of the President is to chair the Treasury Board. He carries out his responsibility for the management of the government by translating the policies and programs approved by Cabinet into operational reality and by providing departments with the resources and the administrative environment they need to do their work. The Treasury Board has an administrative arm, the Secretariat, which was part of the Department of Finance until it was proclaimed a department in 1966.