By Alan Harrington
November 11th,2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Remembrance Day, an event that has meaning for me. I remember my grandfather – a gunner at Vimy Ridge.
The French Government grants, freely and for all time, to the Government of Canada the free us of a parcel of 100 hectares located on Vimy Ridge.
Vimy Ridge memorial had long been on my list of places to experience. I recently joined a tour of places where where Canadians fought battles.
Our tour commenced – “right where it all began”, when a giant 10 tonne mine exploded on July 1 1916 @ 7:20 am announcing “Day One of the Battle of the Somme”.
All that remains now is a gigantic crater under what used to be a German bunker until the Allies blew it up. I walked down into the pit which is now quiet and still. Trees, grass and vegetation have grown over it – this is the spot where Brits and Canadians began to fight back in a war – that had raged for a couple of years.
That explosion was the signal for what ensued next – at the other side of the field at the Beaumont Hamel Memorial.
Here a large caribou statue stands exactly where the brave Newfoundland Regiment scrambled into battle. The then colony of Newfoundland supplied about 1,000 soldiers men who were lumberjacks and sailors before the put on uniforms.
That giant explosion was the cue for those Newfoundlanders to scramble into battle directly into machine gun fire.
he Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial stands as an important symbol of remembrance and a lasting tribute to all Newfoundlanders who served during the First World War. At the heart of the memorial stands a great bronze caribou (the emblem of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment). Its defiant gaze forever fixed towards its former foe, the caribou stands watch over rolling fields that still lay claim to many men with no known final resting place.
The Memorial still has the original trenches in place – now grown over by grass; hallowed ground – the sadness still lingers in the air.
These 760 men didn’t make it past their own series of trenches. 68 answered the roll call the next day.
A terrible sadness, and a tremendous shock for a small colony – all lost – wiped out – in the first half hour of the war.
When I walked among their graves – I didn’t know that two weeks later, one of those unknown buried soldiers would be repatriated to the memorial near the harbour in St Johns, Newfoundland. I was the only Canadian on the tour.
The next day we continued to the Vimy Ridge memorial.
It is so striking – this tall bright marble monument above a high plain. White against the grey sky.
Somehow the sculptor captured the huge landscape space with a stone that rises high above all the terror that had been below.
It felt good to make that connection with my grandfather – and 170,000 of his comrades who fought there a century ago.
To see this most magnificent war monument in person fills a Canadian with pride.
We continued to Flanders Fields at the site where McRae wrote his famous poem.
I had known about this since grade school – never thinking I would visit the site as an adult. But there I was. As the lone Canadian I was asked to read his poem aloud to the group.
As I read it – I tried (as they always do at our Burlington ceremony) – to express the emotion of the words.
After many other sites and monuments – the tour concluded at the Menin Gate in Ypres Belgium.
Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing,
Our organized tour was offered an opportunity to place a wreath at the official ceremony at the Arch that evening.
A ceremony has been held almost every night since the end of the Great War; the host nation that night happened to be Canada. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have the honour of placing the wreath on the gate with the sound of bagpipes in the background.
I later visited Juno Beach and many cemeteries of fallen Canadian soldiers from both wars and felt amazed at the scale of the operation. and massive scale of hard work, loss and horror.
All along the tour (between good local food and drink), we learned of the reasons for the war – and how it progressed and how it ended.
None of it was “glorious” it was the sacrifice, the suffering and the loss that we remember.
Attending the Burlington Remembrance Day ceremony again this year will carry even deeper meaning for me.
We will remember them.
Harrington will be at the Central Library Monday evening – 7:00 pm – doing a Burlington Historical Society presentation on his tour.
