By Mark J Preston ( for CVA)
http://home.cogeco.ca/~cva/

October, 2004

Just recently CVA has had the privilege of the involvement of Photographer Silvia Pecota. Silvia has been a great friend to CVA by donating her work for a few issues. I can't even begin to express how delighted I am that Silvia is such a giving person. Her work is stellar and she has an impressive portfolio, including that of Wayne Gretzky, actor Donald Sutherland and many others.

What is most notable is Silvia Pecota's dedication to the Canadian Armed Forces. Where others show little or no interest at all, Silvia is steadfast and determined to cover our troops and give them the exposure they readily deserve. She has worked with our military for a number of years covering Field Training Exercises and Special Duty Area Deployment. She has also created some wonderful tributes to our fallen soldiers. The Canadian Armed Forces has a true friend in Silvia Pecota, who just recently contributed exclusive shots and a memoir of her time in Haiti which you'll get to part way into this issue.

Why would an accomplished Artist such as Silvia Pecota want to offer her work free? This is the question many might ask and the short answer would be that she obviously has a soft spot for the men and women in uniform. She has connected with them over the years and it shows. Recently in an email Silvia told me, "Milk my pictures, I want to give the troops as much exposure as possible." In addition to this Silvia has given CVA permission to post a pin-up girl for every issue. The pin-up girl is a time honoured military tradition. So when Silvia made the offer I jumped at it, not knowing that it would become the focus of my opening column.

The Pin-up Girl traces her roots back to the great war when soldiers carried pictures of beautiful woman with them on the battlefield. This tradition went on to include fly boys in WWII painting pictures of a pin-up on their bombers. Perhaps the most famous pin-up would be that of the Memphis Belle which inspired a film of the same name.

I as a soldier remembered entering the mess tent to be greeted by a pin-up of the latest Sun Girl. For many soldiers young and old the pin-up was a distraction from the less savory things entailed in military life. Perhaps it is the cold, or the heat or the Sgt. who crapped on you for having a button undone. Regardless, it is only momentary gratification, but something soldiers have shared for almost a Century. Maybe more. Who knows? We've been lucky here at CVA as has been our military to find itself in the company of a friend like Silvia Pecota.

Not long after I accepted Silvia's invitation to post a pin-up girl on the site I received an email from Silvia stating that the military (let's be serious -a slim minority of persons in the military) did not take kindly to beautiful woman donning the uniform and posing for the boys. At first I thought this was a joke, but later in an article by Sun Columnist Mike Strobel I would find out that it was not. In a letter from National Defense Canada to Sun media a letter demanding that they immediately cease publishing photos of woman wearing any form of the CF uniform. It goes on to say that Sun Media violated paragraph 291(1)(c) of the National Defence Act, section 419 of the Criminal Code of Canada, and subparagraph 9(1)(n)(i) of the Trade-Marks Act.

In a nutshell somebody whined so we're acting on it.

In fact the order came as a result of three complaints that this was inappropriate and improper use of military insignia and badges. Strobel went on to say that after talking to Maj. Jim McKillip, DND's Deputy Inspector of Badges and Insignia, that the complaints were based out of Ottawa and in regard to Sun Media's swimsuit calendar. This argument of course is ludicrous, because we need only look to the great Chicken Cannon and the Royal Canadian Air Farce use of Combats and the Artillery cap badge. This is about a bigger issue and we all know it is Political Correctness rearing its ugly head once again.

Or maybe the folks in Ottawa don't want to be targeted by said Chicken Cannon? Hmmmmmmm.

Attention men! Emasculation is to commence immediately!

In essence three people in this Politically Correct military have decided that it's inappropriate for our young men to see beautiful women wearing the uniform in tribute to them. I mean how could the soldiers of Canada's military ask such a thing? Their job is to scour caves for al Quada, provide humanitarian relief to war torn, Countries. Search for missing children and mop up after floods and snow storms. They've got a hell of a lot of nerve wanting to see beautiful women.

God forbid we might offend a couple of pencil necks in Ottawa!

Call me a rebel, but we're running the pin-up girl and DND should take a long and hard look at not only its policy, but who its friends are. People like Silvia Pecota are few and far between. If we had a hundred more of her ilk, our military might just get a bit more support and our public would be better informed.

So we're running Nadja this issue donning a combat shirt and I agree to take it down just as soon as we find every picture of Jean Chretien wearing combats with his helmet on backwards and destroy them post haste.

Quite frankly I found that very offensive.