Restored gun from Vimy Ridge battlefield unveiled
Weapon to have permanent home at new military heritage centre
It was a rusted relic when Doug Reece first saw it.
Reece said the frame supporting the weapon “was so rotted out … the whole gun was just collapsing.”
“It was just falling right down, bending in half,” Reece said. “It was so rotted out that if you rolled that thing five feet, well you couldn’t have – you couldn’t have rolled it two inches because the wheels would have collapsed. There was nothing left of them.”
But after eight years of work meticulously restoring the German artillery gun, the 105-millimetre howitzer was unveiled at the Lake Street Armoury in St. Catharines – looking as though it had just rolled off the assembly line at Krupp Industries.
And in years to come, members of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment Foundation hope to ultimately make it the centre piece of a new Niagara Military Heritage Centre planned for Niagara-onthe-Lake.
Reece led a team of numerous individuals and organizations that pitched in since 2009 to restore the artifact of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The weapon was captured by the 7th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force on April 13, 1917, and subsequently used by Canada’s 23rd Howitzer Battery to continue the attack on the retreating Germans.
The weapon spent most of the past 100 years following the war on display outdoors beside the cenotaph in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and later parked beside a gun shed at Butler’s Barricks where its condition continued to deteriorate.
“It looks pretty good,” Reece said, after the gun was unveiled Friday morning in front of a large gathering of dignitaries, as well as volunteers that pitched in to restore the weapon.
“We spent a lot of time, and we’re having a good time with this,” he added.
Lincoln and Welland Regiment Foundation chairman Garry Guitard said just crafting a new wheel for the gun out of 100-year-old wood took months to complete.
“You needed a special kind of hardwood. It couldn’t be just oak. It had to be a specific type,” he said.
And although the restoration cost about $30,000, Guitard said “we were able to do it at a much reduced cost,” because of the contributions of the volunteers.
Although the gun will remain on display at the Lake Street Armoury for the next few years, it will eventually be moved to its permanent home.
Guitard said the gun will be permanently displayed in the main foyer of the Niagara Military Heritage Centre when the $15-million facility is complete.
The facility, which will serve as a permanent home for the Lincoln and Welland Regiment Museum, is to be built on Parks Canada’s property on Lakeshore Road in Niagara-on-the-Lake, known as the Rifle Range.
In addition to preserving the 200-year-history of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment, Guitard said the facility “also covers basically the future.”
“As we undertake current operations, the centre will be upto-date and will be able to talk to those projects that we’re involved in. We’ll have displays that are current and available for school groups, children and a very large audience (including international visitors passing through NOTL),” he said.
“It will be considered a legacy project and will enable us basically to teach our children and their children, the values that we’ve tried to instill in Canadian citizens today and hopefully will continue to do into tomorrow.”
Guitard said the Foundation is launching a nation-wide fundraising campaign to cover as much of the project cost as possible, advertising the plans in all of Canada’s major newspapers.
He said the organization has already received a sponsorship commitment in excess of $500,000, as well as a commitment from another sponsor for more than $1-million.
“It sounds like a lot of money until you talk about it in the context of being a legacy project,” he said. “Any Canadian that wouldn’t want their name on the wall of that building would be foolish, because what they’re saying is they’re denying our past history and more importantly they’re denying our future and the values that we hold dear at this time.”
Although seeking government funding hasn’t been ruled out, Guitard said he’s “hoping corporate Canada understands the need for citizens of tomorrow to be supported by today, by those who will invest in those companies.”