A look at the pain, pride, drama and numbers

THE EVOLVING STRUGGLE TO FIND MEANING IN VIMY’S BLOODY BATTLE

Ronald MacKinnon wrote home on Good Friday, telling his father he received the laces and the gum and a parcel from Aunt Annie with some socks and handkerchiefs. The letter was sent from France, though MacKinnon didn’t divulge where exactly he was or what he was doing. “By the time you get this you will have read all about it,” he wrote. “Remember me to all at home.”

Three days later, on April 9, 1917, Private MacKinnon was in the first wave of soldiers in the Canadian Corps’ successful capture of the German-held Vimy Ridge. It was an unequivocal victory in a war, and particularly a year, that seldom saw unequivocal victories.

“The press are giving the Canucks great praise,” Ronald MacKinnon’s dad wrote to his son two weeks after the battle, unaware that Ronald had died in the first or second day of fighting.

There is uneasiness in the letter from father to son. “The casualties are coming in by the thousand every day.” In the four-day battle, there were more than 10,600 Canadian casualties, including 3,600 killed. The Canadian Corps had earned their “place of honour,” as Pte. MacKinnon’s father wrote. “They are paying a price for it.” “No more, Ronnie, my boy.” Accounts of the battle are brutal. One soldier wrote to his friend’s mother, telling her how a shell exploded and fragments stabbed her son twice through the abdomen, piercing his bladder; how he was able to walk partway to the dressing station, and died slowly on a stretcher.

After reading it, you’re left with undoubtedly the same thoughts that Pte. MacKinnon’s father had: duelling impulses to be proud of the accomplishment — and dismayed by the cost.

Canada managed to capture the ridge when other, larger powers had failed — and was celebrated internationally for it. France alone had suffered more than 100,000 casualties trying to take it back since the beginning of the war.

In the aftermath, Vimy meant something. It was a coming-out party of sorts for a nation chafing under the British Empire, which still controlled its foreign policy and had obliged Canada to join the war.

The newspapers, politicians and leaders of the day infused the victory with a deeper meaning, lifting the dead to a more noble rank and elevating Vimy, over time, to a mythical stature: Canadians did this when others could not — and in doing it, created a sense of Canada as distinct rather than an appendage to Britain.

“They couldn’t just say, ‘Well they did their duty for the British empire,’ ” said historian Ryan Goldsworthy, who curates the museum at Toronto’s Royal Canadian Military Institute. “That’s not good enough. They had to find deeper meaning.”

One hundred years later, does Vimy still mean something? I didn’t think so. It was a style of battle unrecognizable to modern warfare, fought by people who, younger generations, myself included, never met or even thought of. With the refugee crisis and ISIS and deranged lone-wolf attacks, I thought it grotesque to go about celebrating a bloody century-old battle.

Sure, Vimy put Canada on a course for greater autonomy from Britain. It helped Prime Minister Robert Borden, with his new seat at the Imperial War Council, pressure British leadership to resolve that they would talk about giving the dominion more freedom when the war was over.

Is that enough, for 3,600 dead? In just one battle?

“I would say it’s too high a price to pay,” said Goldsworthy, 28, two years older than me. “But, OK, we’ve paid it. Let’s see what we got out of it.”

It’s uncomfortable, talking about the wasted lives of people my age and younger as if there was some return on their investment. This isn’t a new feeling, however. And to dismiss the Vimy anniversary this year ignores that, at its best, it has historically been occasion — not for breast-beating, but for wrestling with complicated thoughts about the purpose of the First World War.

Tim Cook is a resident historian at the Canadian War Museum. In his absorbing new book, “Vimy: The Battle and the Legend,” Cook shows the idea of Vimy has grown into an all-purpose Canadian symbol for the Great War — and all the anxiety that comes with it.

Cook tracks the evolution of the legend, from an underdog war story to a grand myth about the “birth of a nation.” Vimy was elevated above the other battles of the war, at least partially, because of political will, the book points out.

In the aftermath of the First World War, Vimy was one of eight contenders to be the site of an overseas memorial to Canadian war dead. Ypres was the initial choice, but eventually the government was swayed to Vimy with urging from Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, which “seemed to ease his own troubled conscience over his lack of wartime service,” Cook writes.

Since then, Vimy has gone through periods of obscurity when its themes of military might didn’t match with the themes of the era. Then it’s reborn, given a new theme — usually by politicians — that fits better with the times.

Cook gives a good example: In 1967 — the centennial of Confederation and the 50th anniversary of Vimy — Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson started a new phase in the Vimy legend. It emerged a symbol of “the birth of a nation” — a bloated idea that Cook roundly dismisses.

The idea of Vimy “as a battle that evoked martial pride” was downplayed at the time, since it didn’t fit with the new Canadian identity as a peacemaker. But Pearson was facing a burgeoning demand for more autonomy in Quebec. Vimy, which saw all four Canadian divisions fight together, was a good fit.

“It was the birth of a nation,” Pearson said in a speech at Vimy in April, 1967. “We should recognize the one event which, above all others, made it a nation.”

The question left unanswered in his book is what Vimy will mean next? Thousands of people are expected at the Vimy monument for the 100th anniversary, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau included. How will the whole thing fit in 2017, and for the next 100 years?

Cook can’t answer that question. “I’m a historian, I look backwards. I don’t think you could know. I don’t think anyone could know.”

I thought I knew the answer: I thought Vimy would and should be forgotten as a decaying symbol for justifying the unjustifiable death and suffering. But, as Cook illustrates, struggling with these questions — about whether it was all worth it — has become part of the Vimy exercise.

“Vimy is a contested space and idea,” Cook writes. “One that is infused with grief and sorrow and with pride and celebration.”