Ottawa – Soghomon Soghomonyan, known by Armenians as Gomidas Vartabed, was an Armenian priest, composer, choir leader, singer, music ethnologist, music pedagogue and musicologist. He is regarded as the founder of modern Armenian classical music. Gomidas suffered mentally after witnessing the 1915 Armenian Genocide and is ranked among the Armenian martyrs of genocide. His good friend, Turkish nationalist poet Mehmet Emin Yurdakul, author Halide Edip, and the U.S. ambassador Henry Morgenthau intervened with the government and, by special orders from Talat Pasha, Gomidas was dispatched back to the capital alongside eight other Armenians who had been deported. As of autumn 1916, he had started to show signs of insanity because of the Armenian Genocide and was taken to a Turkish military hospital. He moved to Paris in 1919 where he died in a psychiatric clinic Villejuif, in 1935. In 1936 his ashes were transferred to Yerevan and buried in the Pantheon.
In 2008, the provincial government of Quebec as part of its strong commitment to tolerance and condemnation of genocides, asked the Armenian community of Canada to participate historically in the celebrations of the 400th Anniversary of the foundation of Quebec city. On July 6, 2008, a bronze bust of Gomidas was unveiled near the Quebec National Assembly (provincial legislature, Auteuil street), in recognition of his great input to music in general and to Armenian popular and liturgical music in particular.
As special tributes in honour of Gomidas Vartabed’s 140th anniversary were being held across the world, a few members of the Armenian Community Centre of Montreal visited Gomidas Vartabed's bust to pay due respect to one of the victims of the Armenian Genocide. They found out that this bust was vandalized most probably by well-known Genocide deniers who live freely among us in the civilized world of the 21st century. As you can see below, a swastika has been painted on his forehead. This vandalism, a “symbolic gesture of goodwill” by their perpetrators, once again shows how important, our community's calls for the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide is. It is important because apparently we are surrounded by DENIERS who are not reluctant to express their hatred towards a peace-loving nation and its sacred history and want to set a precedent for Genocide denial. We are wondering how a diplomatic body of a state that has been officially denying the Armenian Genocide for more than 85 years and has ethnically cleansed all its Armenian, Greek, Assyrian and Jewish minorities, can call itself a peace-loving state, accuse other states of the international community of committing genocides (i.e. Israel and China), and organize exhibitions of “peace garden” in the Montreal Botanical Garden.
Once again we are utterly disgusted of this new wave of fascism and neo-nazism that is present in the world and has infiltrated the peace-loving and tolerant Canadian society. Dr. Girair Basmadjian, the President of the Armenian National Committee of Canada, commented on this issue “When certain human beings cannot even accept the presence of a peaceful statue in Canada, might as well plan and execute the assassination of a journalist in Turkey (Hrant Dink-in 2007 because of his open expression of the Armenian Genocide) to talk freely about true events of the Armenian Genocide, which is in the last pages of the Ottoman History.”
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The ANCC is the largest and the most influential Canadian-Armenian grassroots political organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout Canada and affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCC actively advances the concerns of the Canadian-Armenian community on a broad range of issues.
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Le CNAC est l'organisation politique canadienne-arménienne la plus large et influentielle. Collaborant avec une série de bureaux, chapitres et souteneurs à travers le Canada et des organisations affiliées à travers le monde, le CNAC s'occupe activement des inquiétudes de la communauté canadienne-arménienne.