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Vimy Memorial
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The Canadian National Vimy Memorial is a Canadian National Historic Site and one of Canada's most important overseas war memorials. Dedicated to those Canadians who gave their lives in the First World War, the Vimy Memorial is one of eight Canadian First World War memorials in Europe. It was constructed as the national memorial in tribute of the 66,000 Canadian war dead, including 11,285 with no known grave in France. Inscribed on the ramparts of the memorial are the names of the Canadian soldiers who were posted "missing, presumed dead" in France.
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Encyclopedia
The Canadian National Vimy Memorial is a Canadian National Historic Site and one of Canada's most important overseas war memorials. Dedicated to those Canadians who gave their lives in the First World War, the Vimy Memorial is one of eight Canadian First World War memorials in Europe. It was constructed as the national memorial in tribute of the 66,000 Canadian war dead, including 11,285 with no known grave in France. Inscribed on the ramparts of the memorial are the names of the Canadian soldiers who were posted "missing, presumed dead" in France. Inaugurated in 1936, the memorial designed by Walter Seymour Allward took 11 years to construct.
The memorial is located on the former battlefield of the Battle of Vimy Ridge in the preserved Canadian National Vimy Memorial Park, on the territory of the commune of Givenchy-en-Gohelle, near Vimy, France. In 1922, use of the land, for the battlefield park which contains the memorial was granted, in perpetuity, by the French nation to the people of Canada in recognition of Canada's war efforts. The park is still honeycombed with wartime tunnels, craters and trenches, many of which are closed to the public for safety.
History
Competition
At the end of the war, The Imperial War Graves Commission granted Canada 8 sites, 3 in France and 5 in Belgium, on which to erect memorials. Each site represented a significant Canadian engagement and for this reason it was originally decided that each battlefield would be treated equally and graced with identical monuments.
In November 1920, the Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission was formed to discuss the process and conditions for holding a memorial competition for the sites in Europe. The competition being limited to Canadian architects, designers, sculptors and artists. The commission launched a national architectural and design competition in December 1920: 160 design drawings were placed before the jury, and of these submissions 17 were selected for consideration, each artist being commission to produce a plaster maquette of their design. In October 1922, the submission of Toronto sculptor and designer Walter Seymour Allward was selected as the winner of the competition, and the submission of Frederick Chapman Clemesha placing second.
At the outset, there was some debate as to where this monument should be located. Many felt the monument should go in Belgium because of the tremendous effort of the Canadian divisions in Belgium and because of their tremendous sacrifice. In the end the commission selected Vimy Ridge, due largely to its elevation above the plain below, as the preferred site of Allward's design. Clemesha's Brooding Soldier design was selected for the remaining sites but was later, for a number of reasons, erected only at St. Julien, the other sites receiving similar simple commemorative pattern and design.
Design and construction
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.
The two main pylons of the memorial, representing Canada and France, rise thirty metres above the sprawling stone platform. 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 see one of its central figures, Canada Mourning: 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. 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."
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.
World War II
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. 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. University of Ottawa historian Serge Durflinger 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."
Restoration and rededication
In 2004, the memorial was closed for restoration work, including general cleaning and the recarving 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 90th 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.
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. There was an interment ceremony for Private Peterson on April 7, 2007.
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.
Transportation to the memorial
The memorial may be accessed by car, taxi or tour bus, but there is no public transportation to the memorial. Canadians looking for transportation used to be able to get rides from a senior resident of Vimy, Georges Devloo. Known as the Grandpa of Vimy to the Canadian guides, he would offer car rides to Canadian tourists to and from the memorial at no charge, as a way of paying tribute to the Canadians who fought at Vimy. M. Devloo died in February 2009. He had been giving free rides to Canadians for 13 years.
See also
External links
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