(Hamilton Spectator File Photo)
Just five minutes before they landed on the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944 for D-Day, the expressions on the faces of these Canadians soldiers ranged from brightly cheerful to grimly serious.
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, June 6, 2026)
Here’s something on the always relevant topic of how to have a slumber party with a world leader. But first let’s touch on bunkers and surviving the apocalypse.
Today is the anniversary of D-Day, the June 6, 1944 Allied invasion that helped end the Second World War, but not all war. This is why people want bunkers.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has talked about one at his Hawaiian ranch. Nothing extravagant, just 5,000 square feet. “Just like a little shelter,” he’s explained to Bloomberg about his plans.
About $50,000 (U.S.) plus rent and fees gets more ordinary people a more modest bunker in Vivos xPoint, South Dakota, the world’s largest survival community. A gym and restaurant are still coming, but if a nuke drops, your flabby and hungry self already has the bunker.
D-Day soldiers at Normandy’s beaches would have appreciated a bunker. About 156,000 landed, mostly American, British and Canadian. As many as 4,000 were killed. There are ordinary people, then there are ordinary people doing extraordinary things in horrible times.
Large and small, there are now about 130 armed conflicts globally. That’s double from 15 years ago and the most since the Second World War. Conflict has forced about 125 million people from their homes, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
A noteworthy Canadian organization researching these conflicts and advocating for peace is Project Ploughshares, based at the University of Waterloo. It’s now 50, birthed in 1976 by activists Ernie Regehr, a Mennonite, and Murray Thomson, a Quaker, both with pacifist worldviews. Ploughshares also lobbies for a global ban on nuclear weapons.
The apocalypse can arrive in any number of ways, of course, but Albert Einstein once said while he doesn’t know how the Third World War will be fought, the fourth will be with sticks and stones. During our era of rearmament and growing military budgets, that should give us all some pause. Nations beef up their weapons, presumably, to use them.
But about this sleepover with a world leader. After al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, one American dad, Bob Goff, sat down with his three kids and asked what ideas they had to help.
The seven-year-old boy suggested inviting world leaders over to talk. His older brother said these leaders should openly share their hopes for their countries. The girl, the oldest, said let’s go interview them at their homes if they can’t come to ours.
So on the CIA website – it’s cia.gov if you ever want to do this yourself – they found all the world’s presidents, prime ministers, princes and dictators. Then they wrote each and invited themselves over. No agenda. Just friendship.
Most, like UK’s then Prime Minister Tony Blair, declined politely. Still, he wrote something like “Jolly good idea about meeting.” And 29 leaders said, sure, come over. Really? Really. One teacher didn’t like all the upcoming missed school. Dad wrote the teacher “tough.”
Goff’s book, “Love Does,” notes how these leaders often told his kids what they themselves enjoyed as children. One, a stout, grave-looking man with a Russian accent, said meeting the children made him more nervous than meeting US President George W. Bush.
“And when I get nervous, I get hungry!” Then he clapped his hands and out came the food. Kids food. Strawberry tarts and pastries and whipping cream and mountains of ice cream. You can’t make up this stuff.
The children presented each leader they met with a small red box holding their housekey as an open-ended sleepover invitation back home. One eventually wrote to tell the children how much they were missed. “Can we please use our key and come over for a sleepover?” Then they did.
It’s a wild story about ordinary people and a certain anti-bunker approach to life, putting yourself out there without fear. Cynics will, naturally, call it all crazy and naïve. That’s because they don’t understand the power of children, never mind peace.