THIS WEEK, 40,000 CANADIAN PILGRIMS WILL DESCEND ON VIMY TO PAY THEIR RESPECTS TO THE FALLEN. BUT FOR THE FRENCH, HONOURING THEIR “COUSINS FROM NORTH AMERICA” IS NEVER VERY FAR FROM MEMORY.
VIMY AREA’S POSTWAR CHARM BELIES PAST HORRORS
David Robillard first heard about the Canadian army’s heroics at Vimy Ridge from his great-grandmother when he was four years old. He has been fascinated by the epic victory ever since.
A re-enactor who has read every original document he could find about what Canada did in northern France during the First World War, Robillard will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the battle by retracing the steps that some Canadian soldiers took to capture the summit. He will do so wearing a trench coat stitched together in Montreal in 1915 that was found near the battlefield after the guns went silent. To complete his uniform, the 50-year-old amateur historian will strap on a khaki knapsack, a belt, trousers and a metal helmet that were almost certainly worn by Canadian soldiers who fought at Vimy in April 1917.
Robillard’s great-grandmother, Josephine Marie Camus, whose husband died in 1923 from a gas attack suffered in the trenches, lived for nearly 60 years after the war. She was born and raised in Bully-les-Mines, 10 kilometres from Vimy, and the place where the 4th Canadian Division established a base in the fall of 1916.
“She spoke of the generosity and kindnesses of the soldiers, our cousins — she always called them our cousins from North America,” Robillard said.
“My great-grandmother had fond memories of the Canadians but her memory of the war itself was that it was a dramatic tragedy and the worst thing that happened to humanity in the 20th century,” he said. “She described it as butchery.”
To commemorate the battle and the nearly 61,000 Canadians who died and the 172,000 who were wounded during the Great War, as many as 40,000 pilgrims from Canada are expected at the Vimy Memorial on April 9.
The village of Givenchy-en-Gohelle, which is only one kilometre from the ridge, usually welcomes about 700,000 visitors who tour the surrounding battlefields and war graves. Double that number of visitors is expected this year.
“The first troops to enter and hold Givenchy after the German defeat and retreat were the 85th Nova Scotia Highlanders,” recalled the mayor, Pierre Senechal, who is
A BRITISH VISITOR DESCRIBED VIMY TO ME AS LOOKING LIKE A GOLF COURSE.
spearheading months of celebrations recalling what the Canadians did. “They attacked in the snow and the cold. There were bombs, bullets and fear. The noise was extraordinary. It would make you crazy. And they did not hear this for 10 minutes. They heard it for months.”
Today, Le Café L’Érable, or the Maple Café, is the closest building to the summit of the ridge and to the monument. Once known as La Cantine, it was where workers took their lunch during the 11 years that it took to build the impressive twin columns of limestone and concrete that tower over the battlefield.
“The village was completely razed. Everything,” said Francis Vasseur, 67, who with his partner, Martine Luleu, 63, has transformed L’Érable into a shrine honouring the Canadians who fought only a couple of hundred metres away.
Luleu remembers that when she was a kid “families would ride up to the memorial on their bicycles. We used to have picnics with our families up there, lay in the bomb craters behind the ridge. We’d find souvenirs all the time.”
It was sometimes hard to explain what happened at Vimy “because it looks so beautiful,” said Pascal Loosfelt, who has worked as a battlefield tour guide in northern France for 10 years. “A British visitor described Vimy to me as looking like a golf course.”
This being France, the village council is specially producing a commemorative Champagne for the centenary.
“That so many young Canadians came here has always astonished me,” said Senechal, repeating the prevailing sentiment of most in Givenchy today.
“It was not a war to defend your own territory. It was not a war to win petrol or gold. They came here simply to defend us and our liberty. For young people to risk their lives, and for some of them to lose their lives, simply to help their distant French cousins, was exceptional.”