Lessons from a long walk to Vimy Ridge

Take time to reconnect with our soldiers, Jay Fallis says.

If you had asked me beforehand what I was going to be doing at 3 a.m. on Nov. 11, 2014, I probably would have said sleeping. But on that fall morning, I was instead sitting on a bench in rural France catching my breath. It was a Remembrance Day I will not forget. This story starts in Calais, on the northern French coast. After visiting a friend in London, England, I had decided to take the ferry across the English Channel. My goal was to make it to the Vimy Ridge monument for the morning of Remembrance Day. For Canadians, this is a well-trodden pilgrimage, and I was eager to add my name to the list of those who had made the journey.

Upon arrival at the Calais train terminal, I began to realize my trip might not have been as well planned as I had thought. Instead of a train going directly to Vimy, the only option would be to travel to Hazebrouck, a town in the same vicinity. I figured that once I arrived in Hazebrouck, further transportation would be easy to come by.

I arrived in Hazebrouck only to discover that no trains would be running to Vimy until late the next day. At 10 p.m., with no other transportation methods on the table and the sole Hazebrouck hotel closed up, the only logical thing to do was start walking.

After leaving Hazebrouck, everything was peaceful. I followed a long winding road that took me through farmers’ fields, valleys and small villages. The sights and sounds were breathtaking, and it gave me a chance to think about the soldiers, whose footsteps I was following.

I couldn’t help but remember how lucky I was to have grown up far away from the reaches of war. The soldiers who fought at Vimy, and other battles close by, were my age and younger. What unthinkable brutality had they faced? How did they possibly continue on as their colleagues and friends died beside them?

The perseverance and fortitude they showed is unimaginable.

At the five-hour point in my journey, I decided to take a rest. There at the side of the road was a bench, and so I sat down. For the next few minutes I contemplated whether I should continue on. I was exhausted, and my reliable cellphone, carrying the directions to Vimy, had died nearly an hour before. However, the one thing I couldn’t get out my head was the need to finish this journey. If teenagers could make this trek in the direst of circumstances, surely I could on a calm night such as this. I got up and kept walking. After many hours, the sun began to rise. I had finally made it. When I arrived, I remember looking up and being awestruck by the Vimy monument. It seemed as if it were almost naturally apart of the landscape, its ivory towers piercing the bright blue morning sky. I walked along the ground that had been displaced by shelling, I walked through the cemeteries that marked the many soldiers who had fallen and I stood for the moment of silence where many soldiers had fought and died.

For me this is an important story to tell in the lead-up to the 100th anniversary of Vimy Ridge. This battle took place a long time ago and thousands of kilometres away. It is easy to feel disconnected from it. However, taking this unexpected journey, along the very path many soldiers took 100 years ago, led me to realize that these soldiers were not much different from myself or any other Canadian. They travelled from Canada to a place they did not know, in the most brutal of circumstances, to protect their way of life, to protect the peace we now take for granted.

It is so important that we always remember the sacrifices they made. Jay Fallis lives in Ottawa. He recently graduated with a master’s in political science from the University of Toronto. He can be reached at jjmfallis@gmail.com.

When I arrived, I remember looking up and being awestruck by the Vimy monument. It seemed as if it were almost naturally apart of the landscape, its ivory towers piercing the bright blue morning sky.