Mayor Dave Elliott said he has received a flood of e-mail and telephone calls since he attended a Sept. 7 news conference announcing the memorial in his lakeside community.

There are threats of boycotts by people in the Spokane area, which Nelson counts on for ski tourism in the winter. The Veterans of Foreign Wars has called on President Bush and Congress to pressure Canada to stop the project.

“The city of Nelson doesn’t deserve this,” Elliott said.

In announcing Our Way Home, a celebration set for July 8-9, 2006, organizer Isaac Romano said the purpose is to honor “the courageous legacy of Vietnam War resisters and the Canadians who helped them resettle in this country.”

The celebration is to include music, speakers and other events.

A bronze sculpture, showing a draft dodger being welcomed by two Canadians, is to be unveiled at the event.

Romano issued a statement late Monday saying he is reconsidering the project.

“The Our Way Home National Reunion organizing group will be looking broadly for the appropriate setting for the peace monument. It may or may not be located in Nelson,” the statement said.

Romano did not return telephone messages.

Nelson City Council members Doug Jay and Ian Mason say the event could damage the region’s extensive tourist trade with the United States.

“The involvement of the city of Nelson in this would spell certain economic disaster for members of our local business community that trade with or rely on American tourist dollars,” Mason said in a news release.

The story fails to note if he expressed any moral concerns over the issue. Those who oppose the memorial do have moral issues to confront, however:

The VFW supports the right of the Canadian backers to build the memorial but cannot support the message, said John Furgess, the national commander of the 2.4 million member organization.

“This exercise of free expression is an absolute slap in the face to every man and woman who ever served in uniform . . . both in our military and theirs,” said Furgess, a Vietnam veteran from Tennessee.

“To honor draft-dodgers, deserters, people who brought grief to the families they left behind and anguish to those American men who took their place, is an abomination.”

An estimated 125,000 Americans fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft. Many settled in British Columbia, especially in the Gulf Islands off Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast northwest of Vancouver, and the West Kootenay, the interior region where Nelson is located.

About half returned to the United States when President Jimmy Carter granted them amnesty in 1977.

Elliott, the target of a petition calling for his resignation, said Nelson has a diverse and liberal population that welcomed the war resisters.

In a related story, the Washington Post reports:

U.S. Ambassador to Laos Patricia M. Haslach has received the remains of two American soldiers killed in Laos during the Vietnam War.

She attended a formal repatriation ceremony on Monday with Laotian Vice Foreign Minister Phongsavath Boupha, the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Vientiane, said yesterday.

The decomposed bodies were discovered in the province of Savannakhet by members of the U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and Laotian authorities, the embassy said.

More than 370 Americans are listed as missing in action in Laos, and 192 sets of remains have been returned since 1992.