All the world over, there are battlefields, the names of which are written indelibly on the pages of our troubled human story. In the annual report of the CBMC in 1927, the secretary summarizes international reaction to the work crews preservation efforts. Battlefield memorials, and Vimy Ridge specifically, provide an ideal opportunity for such an analysis. Thus began the seventeen-year process of designing and building the Vimy Ridge Memorial.2. Upon arriving at the Vimy Ridge Memorial she wrote of the park that, It is Canadian soil (MURDOCH 1989: 25). However, in order to preserve the shell holes and physical scars on the landscape and ensure they were visible for visitors, it was necessary to keep the grass and other cover plants closely cropped. The 2007 refurbishment of the monument and the 90th anniversary celebrations of the battle served to focus public attention once again on the events of Easter 1917. This delay meant that during the downtime in the Summer of 1924, Captain later Major D.C. Unwain-Simson, who was part of the engineering corps and responsible for overseeing the work crews, ordered the workers to line the trenches with concrete and to replace the sandbags with concrete as well while waiting for the first delivery of the Croatian stone (HUCKER AND SMITH 2012: 41). 14 BIANCHI, Angela (2004) Canadian National Vimy Memorial Park, CBC News, 9 April 2004. http://www.cbc.ca/news2/background/vimy/cdn_natl_memorial.html. (1922), Brig. Particularly, in a letter to Larkin from 22 July 1922, King states that the Vimy Ridge Memorial should become a place of pilgrimage for travelers and an enduring monument in Europe to our country's valour.3 For King and the committee following his direction, Vimy in particular was to be a place for all Canadians to visit and to appreciate the sacrifices made by the entire nation. Florence Murdoch, the sister of Alfred W. Murdoch, an officer in the 1, Canadian Heavy Artillery Brigade at Vimy who lived in Amherst Nova Scotia, kept a diary when she traveled with her brother to Vimy in 1936. Battlefield Tourism: History, Place and Interpretation, Oxford: Elsevier Press, pp. in David Pierce Beatty (ed. Eight years later, Colonel H.C. Osborne of the CBMC stated that finding the correct stone was such a time-consuming process because the memorial required stone of an agreeable colour, obtainable in large sizes required, tractable enough for sensitive carving but at the same time. The supposed purpose of Hitlers visit was to refute claims by the Canadian and British press that Nazi soldiers had defaced the monument. 1 HAGGART, Ron, (2007) How Hitler Spared Vimy Ridge, Toronto Star, 7 April 2007, http://www.thestar.com/news/2007/04/07/how_hitler_spared_vimy_ridge.html, 2 GOVERNMENT OF CANADA (2012), Canadian Memorial Battlefields Commission, Ottawa: Veterans Affairs Canada, http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/memorials/overseas/can_battle_committee. Throughout their ten years in power the Conservative Party of Canada sought to increase Canadians awareness of Canadas military history while downplaying other events such as the 30th anniversary of the Patriation of Canadas Constitution and the creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms(DUMMIT 2013: A16). Thousands of visitors had come to the French countryside for the occasion, and journalists, veterans, military personnel, politicians and academics all took the opportunity to comment upon the legacy of Vimy Ridge and to repeat stories from the sites colourful history. A monument to Vimy could not be built in Canada and have the same effect, the geographic reality was that Canadians had fought overseas and so the monument to their service and death must be over there.. In 2004 Canadian travel-writer Angela Bianchi commented on how the preserved battlefield impacted her emotionally. Finally, the physical features of the landscape, both natural and man-made, shaped what aspects of the site were highlighted and incorporated into the public narrative of the memorial. The most in-depth of all the works dealing with the history of the site itself is Jacqueline Hucker and Julian Smiths monograph written for a popular audience and providing a broad and accessible overview of the first hundred years of the sites history. BERTON, Pierre (2001), Vimy, Toronto: Anchor Canada. LLOYD, David (1998), Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1919-1939, Oxford: Berg Press. unexploded ordnances buried in the ground at Vimy. Despite the fact that ninety percent of the trees on the site were actually planted by the French Government and that the maple trees were brought to the site solely because of the association between Canada and the maple leaf, the apocryphal story of the trees is repeated in both popular culture and academic texts. Larkin, 22 July 1922, Mackenzie King Fonds MG 26 Volume 1174, http://www.treaty-accord.gc.ca/text-texte.aspx?id=102661. Canadian artillery opened fire at 5:30 am and by nightfall on April 12, Canadian troops had captured the ridge and surrounding areas. Mould later reflected on his companions remarks in his diary. Sheep were a perfect solution as they were lighter and unlike human groundskeepers, replaceable (HUCKER AND SMITH 2012: 81). 3 MACKENZIE KING, William Lyon (1922), William Lyon MacKenzie King to Hon. A physical symbol of the mourning of Canadians and a tangible expression of rememberance. Additionally, in his article about visiting battlefields of the Western Front, Scott Ellsworth described Vimy as follows: walking through [the trenches] is a chilling experience, giving a hands-on perspective of trench warfare found nowhere else.20 For Ellsworth not only were the trenches impressive, they also served to make Vimy Ridge unique among all Western Front battlefields. The perception of the battlefield as physically part of the mother country was further reinforced discursively, but also literally and symbolically, through specific actions undertaken by Canadian officials. Military historian Kenneth Mackey visited the site in the 1960s and observed that there was, rusting shells and wires throughout the Vimy Ridge site (MACKEY 1965: 190). For example, the maple trees, preserved tunnels and concrete trenches that make Vimy Ridge unique among First World War memorials exist in their present state only due to environmental and geographic contingencies. BOIRE, Michael (2007), The Battlefield Before the Canadians, 1914-1916, in G. Hayes, A. Iarocci and M. Bechthold (eds. 23Other pilgrims also reflected on how the monument sat on Canadian land. In much of the historiography, both Canadian and European, monuments have been treated as symbolic constructions, not as actual places people visit and experience. As a result, when the Canadian Battlefields Memorial Commission (CBMC) was deciding on how to construct such monuments, they prioritized a universal and national character for the eight sites they selected (HUCKER 2009: 94-95). Numerous works discuss the experience of Canadian soldiers and provide an overview of their actions during the three-day battle. This extensive tunnel network carved out of the chalk often incorporated rail and telephone lines, hospitals, supply dumps and machine gun and mortar posts (BARTON, DOYLE and VANDEWALLE 2000). The most in-depth of all the works dealing with the history of the site itself is Jacqueline Hucker and Julian Smiths monograph written for a popular audience and providing a broad and accessible overview of the first hundred years of the sites history. While not stipulated in the text of the treaty, during final negotiations between the French Minister of Devastated Regions and Canadas representative of the CBMC (and House of Commons Speaker) Sgt. Eerie to see all the crators left from mines infact near the statue you cannot pass barbed wire as there may still be mines in the soil. 5-27. The trees are not the only important biological feature of the site, as a large area of the park is also covered in grass and kept short by a herd of grazing sheep. The result for visitors was a one-of-a-kind experience found nowhere else (ELLSWORTH 1990: E5). Yet, the reason for the animals presence at the site has been forgotten in popular memory, rather they have simply become like the grass and the chalk of the ridge itself; just a part of the European landscape and not consciously placed there as the result of a specific management strategy. Furthermore, the biological life of the memorial park served to shape peoples interaction with the site and to influence how the public memorialized fallen Canadian soldiers. Larkin, 22 July 1922, Mackenzie King Fonds MG 26 Volume 1174, C2729, Library and Archives Canada. ), THOMPSON, Denise (1996), National Sorrow, National Pride: Commemoration of War in Canada, 1918-1945,. In light of these recent developments and the approaching 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April of 2017, for which commemoration events are already being planned, it is important to study how peoples understandings of historical events are not only actively shaped by conscious human actors, but. LEMIEUX, Rodolphe (1922), Sgt. 63 Likes, TikTok video from figgyfresh (@figgyfr3sh): "Visit the Canadian Vimy Ridge Memorial, France #canada #france #vimyridge #battlefield #memorial #history #ww1". VANCE, Jonathan (1997), Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning and The First World War, Vancouver: UBC Press. Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1919-1939. Hence, King does not demand that the memorial honour the valour of the army or the specific regiments which fought at Vimy, but rather that of the entire country of Canada. The Battlefields of Vimy Ridge are extremely well-perserved with modifications made for safety reasons, and unforgettably beautiful. Additionally, other works place the battle within the context of the larger Battle of Arras, orchestrated by the British Army, or within the even larger context of engagements on the Western Front during the Spring of 1917 (COOK 2008; BERTON 2001). Over the past eighty years the sheep have become an iconic aspect of the Vimy landscape and part of the experience of visiting the site. MACKENZIE KING, William Lyon (1922), William Lyon MacKenzie King to Hon. Thousands of visitors had come to the French countryside for the occasion, and journalists, veterans, military personnel, politicians and academics all took the opportunity to comment upon the legacy of Vimy Ridge and to repeat stories from the sites colourful history. Veterans Affairs Canada is still determining how to deal with the issue of replacing the trees at the site given the importance generations of visitors have attached to them (HUCKER AND SMITH 2012: 90). 21 BIANCHI, Angela (2004) Canadian National Vimy Memorial Park, CBC News, 9 April 2004. http://www.cbc.ca/news2/background/vimy/cdn_natl_memorial.html, 22 CANADIAN BATTLEFIELD MEMORIAL COMMISSION, op.cit., 1927, R1183-0-7-E. 23 ASSOCIATED PRESS (1941), Vimy Memorial Intact, New York Times. 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