Next Sunday, April 9, will be the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Canada’s victory at Vimy was a defining event for our country.
To commemorate the anniversary, Legion Magazine and William Shatner tell the story of the First World War battle in a newly released video on YouTube that runs less than seven minutes.
Image of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, honouring Canadians who fought and gave their lives in WWI, that appears in the video, “William Shatner – Battle of Vimy Ridge.”
Tim Cook writes on the Canadian War Museum website: “The capture of Vimy was more than just an important battlefield victory. For the first time all four Canadian divisions attacked together: men from all regions of Canada were present at the battle. Brigadier-General A.E. Ross declared after the war, ‘in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation.’
“Vimy became a symbol for the sacrifice of the young Dominion. In 1922, the French government ceded to Canada in perpetuity Vimy Ridge, and the land surrounding it. The gleaming white marble and haunting sculptures of the Vimy Memorial, unveiled in 1936, stand as a terrible and poignant reminder of the 11,285 Canadian soldiers killed in France who have no known graves.”
Hi Gail
Thank you for this post. I’m a big fan of Genealogy a la carte; it’s a great resource for me in researching and writing my family history.
36,523 days after their deaths at Vimy Ridge, I’ll be showing 60 glass plate photographs of Vimy Ridge and documentation of the lives of four soldiers who died during the battle at the Discovery Table at BIFHSGO’s monthly meeting on April 8 at Ben Franklin Place, Ottawa.
Great! http://bifhsgo.ca/