War museum historian to examine Canada’s critical role at Vimy Ridge

Expert speakers bring the past to life at 13th annual military conference

The last of the 650,000 Canadian men and women who served in the First World War died eight years ago. John Babcock was only 16 years old when he enlisted; he was 109 when he died.

Still, 25,000 Canadians made the pilgrimage to the Vimy Memorial last year — the centennial of a key engagement during the “war to end all wars.”

The Battle of Vimy Ridge, in which Canadian soldiers played a major role, has become an important chapter in the country’s history books. The towering monument dedicated to that bloody battle — depicted today on everything from Canadian passports to $20 bills — has morphed through a cycle of different meanings over the decades, military historian and author Tim Cook said.

“The First World War has been seen as a senseless slaughter, but also as a war where people think we (Canadians) came of age,” he said.

The history of that 1917 battle and the Canadian monument unveiled in northern France in 1926 will be explored in Cook’s keynote address at the 13th annual Windsor Military Studies Conference, Feb. 9-10 at the Major Tilston Armoury, 4007 Sandwich St.

“The symbol of Vimy, it’s meant different things over the years,” said Cook, a historian at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa who has focused on the First World War in five of his 10 books.

Co-sponsored by the University of Windsor, the Wilfrid Laurier University Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies, the Essex and Kent Scottish and other Canadian Armed Forces units, the annual conference connects the military, historians and other academia and the community.

Students and members of the military attend for free; admission for others costs $25.

Registration takes place Feb. 9 from 5:15-7 p.m., when Cook talks about the Vimy legend. Saturday’s registration is from 8:30-9 a.m. Presentations will conclude with a question-and-answer session at 2 p.m.

Peter Way speaks on guerrilla warfare and “hyperviolence” during the Seven Years’ War, an earlier “world war” fought between 1756-63.

Ken Shepherd profiles the lives of the local Beaubien family during that period.

Patrick Dennis, a retired air force colonel, will speak on the “myth versus reality” of Canadian conscription in the First World War.

Charles Bain profiles the air effort of the Poles and Yugoslavs — “the other allies” — during the Second World War.