VIMY, France – To paraphrase William Shakespeare, who was writing about the Battle of Agincourt that took place not far from here, Canadians now a-bed will thank their lucky stars that there were not here on April 9, 2007 – at least those who can’t stand crowds.
From all reports, the commemoration of a battle some 600 years later – the taking of Vimy Ridge by the four divisions of the Canadian Corps on Easter Monday in 1917 – will be a tourist’s nightmare. This small village in Northern France is expected to be invaded by more than 20,000 Canadians this coming weekend.
As coincidence would have it, the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, which put Canada on the map as a nation that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the major powers, falls on the Easter Weekend, just like the original battle did in 1917.
The bad news is that this usually tranquil area of Northern France is expected to be swamped by car and bus traffic and the hotels and restaurants within a 100-kilometre radius will be filled to overflowing.
The good news is that once the "tumult and the shouting" dies, Vimy and the towns and cities in the vicinity will return to their normal, bucolic existence – at least until the usual hordes of tourist descend again during the summer months.
Every Canadian should visit Vimy Ridge at least once. The breathtaking memorial’s twin towers soar high into the sky and cause a lump in the throat and a rush of national pride when first glimpsed. Built at an original cost of $1.5 million and dedicated by King Edward VIII in 1936, the monument recently underwent a $20-million facelift to repair damage done by the harsh Atlantic winters.
The Vimy Memorial towers over the Doui Plain from the top of what was known during the First World War as Hill 145. Located about 19 kilometres northeast of the city of Arras, this is the highest point on Vimy Ridge.
The inscription on the base of the monument reads, in French and English: "To the valour of their countrymen in the Great War and in memory of their sixty thousand dead this monument is raised by the people of Canada."
Built on approximately one square kilometre of land donated in perpetuity to Canada by the grateful people of France in 1922, the memorial honours the 3,598 Canadians killed and the 7,0000 wounded during the taking of the ridge. It also contains the inscribed names of 11.285 Canadian soldiers who died in France and whose remains were never found.
Dominating the memorial is a 30-tonne shrouded figure carved out of one gigantic piece of Seget limestone from Croatia. She represents the spirit of Canada and honours the men who captured the ridge after four brutal days of fighting. The French and British had made earlier unsuccessful attempts to wrest this strategic area from the well-entrenched Germans – and suffered more than 150,000 casualties for their efforts.
The memorial was designed by Canadian sculptor and architect Walter Seymour Allward, who claimed that the design came to him in a dream. Unfortunately, he tried a new process of attaching Seget limestone to an inner foundation of cement. These materials expand and contract at different temperatures and Northern France’s harsh winters caused them to separate, resulting in massive cracks in the limestone and water damage from seepage. New methods were used in the refurbishment of the memorial to prevent problems of this nature in future.
Because Vimy Ridge still contains hundreds of thousands of unexploded shells and mines, much of the area is out of bounds to visitors. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission hires Canadian students on a rotating basis to act as guides. They conduct individual and group tours of the site free of charge.
One drawback in visiting Vimy Ridge is that there is no direct public transportation from the nearest major community, Arras, to the memorial. If you have rented a car, this is no problem, but if you arrive by train, you will have to take a taxi or arrange for a rental car on the spot.
Highly recommended it to fly into the Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport and take the TGV (high-speed) train to Arras, a trip that takes less than an hour. If you book ahead with Rail Europe (www.raileurope.ca), you can arrange a rail/drive package that gives you unlimited first-class travel and a car rental for whatever length of time you require (and your budget can accommodate).
You will probably want at least five days of train travel and a couple of days of car hire because once you’ve toured the memorial and enjoyed the restaurants and museums of Arras, you’ll want to move on to other battlefield sites in the area and perhaps head north about 110 kilometres to experience the beautiful coastline of the Pas de Calais.
For that matter, with Paris only an hour away by fast train, and Brussels, Belgium not that much farther, a whole array of possibilities is opened up to you.
The beauty of a rail pass is that you can get on and off the train on a whim and decide on the spot where you want to go next. The high-speed trains usually require advance reservations, but this is easily done at any railroad station.
For the World War One buff, there are dozens of cemeteries and battle sites within easy driving distance of Vimy. For Canadians, the Belgian town of Iepers (the Flemish spelling), Ypres (French spelling) or Wipers (the Canadian soldiers’ pronunciation during the war) is an important stop.
Plan to spend at least a couple of hours at the "In Flanders Fields" museum in Iepers. You can type a veteran’s name into a computer as you enter the building and receive a printout card. At various stops throughout the displays you can find out what part the veteran played in a particular battle by inserting the card into the computer located there. When your tour is complete, you insert the card one last time and learn whether your veteran survived the war.
The one disappointment – although it might have been corrected by now because so many Canadians were complaining – is that a recorded voice at one stop in the museum recites "In Flanders Fields" with a very thick English accent. The immortal poem was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a medical officer with the Canadian Corps, who died of pneumonia not long after composing the words recited by every schoolchild on Remembrance Day. McCrae was from Guelph, Ontario and did not speak with a British accent.
But this is a small annoyance on a trip that will reinforce your pride in being Canadian and your awareness of how much we owe to those young men and women who were willing to sacrifice their own lives so that we could enjoy the freedoms that we all too often take for granted.
(Photo by Tom Douglas)
This article appeared in the Hamilton Spectator just prior to the 90th anniversary ceremonies commemorating the Battle of Vimy Ridge
Comments