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The 'Canadian National Vimy Memorial' is one of Canada's most important overseas war memorials for those Canadians who gave their lives in the First World War. It was constructed as the national memorial for Canada's 66,000 war dead and is located in France, on the site of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The memorial stands atop Hill 145, near the towns of Vimy and Givenchy-en-Gohelle, in the Pas-de-Calais ''département'' of northern France. The Government of France granted the land "freely, and for all time, to the Government of Canada the free use of the land exempt from all taxes" in 1922, as an expression of gratitude. It is ceremonially considered Canadian land, but unlike an embassy, it is subject to the laws of France.^[1] The entrance to the park bears the sign "the free gift in perpetuity of the French nation to the people of Canada."

Contents

History

References

External links

History

The memorial was designed by Canadian sculptor the late Walter Seymour Allward, his proposal being selected from 160 submissions by Canadians who participated in a competition held in the early 1920s. Construction of the memorial commenced in 1925 and took eleven years. The official unveiling was on July 26, 1936, by Edward VIII, one of his few official duties during his short reign as King of Canada, in the presence of French President Albert Lebrun and over 50,000 Canadian and French veterans and their families.^[2]
The two main pylons of the memorial, representing Canada and France, rise thirty metres above the sprawling stone platform.^[3] Various stone sculptures exhibit a wealth of symbolism and assist visitors in contemplating the memorial as a whole. Due to the height of Vimy Ridge, the topmost stone sculpture — representing peace — is approximately 110 metres above the Lens Plain to the east. The sculptures were created by Canadian artists, and record and illuminate the sacrifice of all who served during the war and, in particular, to the more than 66,000 men who lost their lives. The names of the 11,285 Canadian soldiers who died in France but have no known graves are carved on the memorial (the names of those who died in Flanders are on the Menin Gate). Visitors approaching the front of the monument will see one of its central figures: a woman, hooded and cloaked, facing eastward toward the new day. Her eyes are downcast and her chin rests on her hand. Below her is a tomb, draped in laurel branches and bearing a helmet. This grieving figure represents Canada — a young nation mourning her fallen sons. Jacqueline Hucker, an Ottawa art historian who served on the conservation team that recently restored the Vimy monument, declares that "It was like no other war memorial that had gone before" because Vimy was not a war memorial which was devoted to triumph or the glory of a great military leader, but rather to a profound sense of duty towards the legions of men who filled the ranks of the dead.^[4] Hucker adds

: "There are no signs of victory there at all...It expresses our obligation to the dead, and the grief of the living — sentiments of sacrifice that you do not see in war memorials until this time."^[4]
The twenty statues present on the Vimy Memorial site were originally sculpted by Allward in roughly life-size out of unfired clay. These were then replicated in more durable plaster, and the plaster copies were sent to France, where French stone carvers replicated them again in stone, doubling their size. The plaster working copies, nearly destroyed in the 1960s, are now on display in Canada, with seventeen at the Canadian War Museum and the remaining three at the Military Communications and Electronics Museum attached to Canadian Forces Base Kingston.^[6]
The novel The Stone Carvers, by Jane Urquhart, is set amid the creation of the memorial.
In 1996, the site was designated by the Canadian government as a National Historic Site, one of only two outside Canada, both in France (the other is Beaumont-Hamel NHS in Amiens). In addition to the monument itself, the memorial includes a small museum, an area of preserved trenches and tunnels, and nearby cemeteries of those killed in the battle.
The magazine ''After The Battle'' published a photographic history of the site following the repatriation of Canada's Unknown Soldier in 2000, which included a ceremony at the Vimy Memorial.^[7] One of these photographs depicted the memorial's most notorious visitor: Adolf Hitler. On June 2, 1940, as his armies were conquering France, Hitler personally toured the Vimy Memorial and its preserved trenches. Hitler had been twice decorated for bravery as an infantryman during the Great War and saw combat in the general vicinity of Vimy, often against Commonwealth soldiers in similar trenches. While the German leader had no qualms about destroying culturally significant locations in France including many French war monuments which were torn down by the Nazis, the Vimy memorial carried no messages of Allied triumph over Germany. So it was protected by Hitler, who assigned special units of the Waffen SS to guard the monument from defacement by regular German Wehrmacht soldiers.^[8] University of Ottawa historian Serge Durflinger[1] notes that "Hitler admires it immensely, he says so at the time. As a result, the Germans respect[ed] the memorial all through the war."^[4]

In 2004, the memorial was closed for restoration work, including general cleaning and the re-carving of names, with the statues moved off-site, cleaned and restored. The restored memorial was rededicated by the Queen of Canada, Queen Elizabeth II, in a ceremony on April 9, 2007 commemorating the ninetieth anniversary of the battle. Also present were Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. They were joined by thousands of Canadian students, veterans of World War II and more recent conflicts, and descendants of those who fought at Vimy, comprising the largest crowd on the Ridge since the 1936 dedication.^[10]
Private Herbert Peterson of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment was killed during a raid on German trenches on the night of June 8–9, 1917, near Vimy Ridge. Peterson’s remains were not discovered until 2003. He was identified in February 2007 through a DNA match with a relative.^[11] There was an interment ceremony for Private Peterson on April 7, 2007.^[12]
The rehabilitation of the Vimy Memorial was part of the Canadian Battlefield Memorials Restoration Project, directed by the Department of Veterans Affairs in cooperation with other Canadian departments, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, consultants and specialists in military history.

References

1. Design and Construction of the Vimy Ridge Memorial
2. Veterans Affairs Canada: VAC Canada Remembers: The Battle of Vimy Ridge - Fast Facts
3. Richard Foot, 'Vimy memorial had a turbulent history of its own,' The Vancouver Sun, April 4, 2007, p.A4
4. Foot, The Vancouver Sun, op. cit., p.A4
5. Foot, The Vancouver Sun, op. cit., p.A4
6. WarMuseum.ca: History as Monument: The Sculptures on the Vimy Memorial
7. (2000). "Remembrance: The Canadian Unknown Soldier". In: ''After The Battle'', '109'. ISSN 0306-154X.
8. Ron Haggart, "The real story of who saved Vimy Ridge," The Vancouver Sun, April 9, 2007, p.A7 Haggart's father fought at Vimy Ridge with Vancouver's 72nd Seaforth Highlanders a Canadian regiment
9. Foot, The Vancouver Sun, op. cit., p.A4
10. Tom Kennedy, CTV National News, April 9, 2007.
11. http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/20428
12. http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=feature/vimy90/events#april7

External links

★ Vimy Memorial - Veteran Affairs Canada

★ Vimy War Memorial Gallery, including photos of Hitler's visit

★ CBC Archives: King Edward VIII's speech at the dedication ceremony

★ CBC News story regarding the rededication ceremony