Vimy: a distinctly Canadian effort
Canadian qualities: Individual initiative; esprit de corps; gumption; enthusiasm
VIMY RIDGE, FRANCE — On their journey to Vimy Ridge, Jason Vander Meulen and his six students from Waterloo Collegiate Institute walked into the Hotel Campanile in Lille, France, and into a display of thanks from a grateful nation.
“The lobby is a sea of Canadian flags and red and white decorations,” said Meulen. “It was very welcoming.”
Meulen and his charges are among thousands of Canadians to make the trip to the Vimy
Ridge Memorial, and the ceremonies held Sunday to mark the 100th anniversary of the battle that killed more than 3,600 Canadian soldiers.
As shuttles carried them from the hotel to the Vimy Ridge Memorial, a distance of about 50 kilometres, it was clear the French have not forgotten the sacrifices Canadians made a century ago.
“Homes all around the Vimy
site flew Canadian flags,” said Meulen.
They joined thousands of others under a hot, spring sun for the ceremonies. “Students from across Canada arrived throughout the morning clutching water, sunscreen, and a brown-baguette lunch packed at their various hotels,” said Meulen.
As the names of the dead echoed over the crowd, the high school teacher was moved by the art installation The Boots of the Fallen.
“Young Canadians placed boots with poppies in rows on and around the monument,” said Meulen. “To me the spacing seemed to emulate the grave markers from the various cemeteries we’ve visited.”
Stewart Weir, a 17-year-old student from Waterloo Collegiate, called the day “amazing.” The reading of the names of the dead, and the boots made big impressions on him.
“It was so interesting to see so many Canadians there for the celebration,” said Weir.
Nathan Poste, 16, a student in the group from Waterloo Collegiate, said the ceremonies make him proud to be Canadian.
“They honoured the brave men who fell at Vimy as well as during the Great War,” said Poste. “I felt that France was very appreciative.”
Getting on the ground in Vimy gave life to his high school history classes. “What stood out for me about Vimy Ridge was the landscape,” said Poste. “Before going to Vimy I didn’t realize how high the ridge was.”
The land around the Vimy Ridge Memorial still has the scars from the massive artillery bombardments of the First World War.
“As a teacher you always want to bring home the brutal conditions of this conflict when talking about the Western Front,” said Meulen. “Then you see first hand the terrain pulverized into these irregular mounds and craters that are now a forest floor,” said Meulen. “It gets so much more real. This land was full of Canadian boys while that earth was getting pulverized.”
The history teacher watched as students from across Canada struck up conversations, and burst into spontaneous renditions of O Canada while waiting for shuttles. They shared water bottles and sunscreen. Some students shared their umbrellas with seniors, shading them from the hot sun.
“I saw a lot of conversations started by sharing where they were from, telling stories of their journey so far,” said Meulen.
Another student from this area, Kieran Coffey of St. David Secondary School in Waterloo, was also at the Vimy Ridge ceremonies. The day before that, Coffey visited the grave of his great-great uncle Alexander MacDonald, who was killed in action in 1918.
Coffey had a rock from the MacDonald family homestead in Ironville, Cape Breton. He placed it on his uncle’s grave.
Canadians of all ages and all walks of life, they gathered under the soaring pillars of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial on Sunday to mark the 100th anniversary of that fateful battle — and reflect on its enduring legacy.
Exactly 100 years earlier, the scene here had been quite different.
Instead, rain and sleet and artillery shells had lashed what then was a muddy, bloody battlefield as 30,000 Canadian soldiers huddled in trenches and waited for the assault to kick off.
But there was one key similarity between that Easter Monday on April 9, 1917, and the scene 100 years later: Canadians stood together, shoulder to shoulder, proudly and unabashedly as one people.
“These ordinary and extraordinary men of the British dominion fought for the first time as citizens of one and the same country,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in French as he addressed the crowd.
“Francophones and Anglophones. New Canadians. Indigenous Peoples. Side by side, united, here in Vimy, within the four divisions of the Canadian Corps.”
The Battle for Vimy Ridge was a distinctly Canadian effort from the beginning, a true demonstration of all the best qualities that Canada represents: individual initiative; esprit de corps; gumption; enthusiasm.
Unburdened by a history of warfare, the Canadians looked at war differently and adopted new tactics such as the creeping barrage while entrusting the battle plan for the first time to even the lowliest privates.
But what really set the battle apart was that, for the first time in the Great War, the Canadians would be fighting all together as one single unit: the Canadian Corps.