{"id":4880,"date":"2015-07-22T13:32:08","date_gmt":"2015-07-22T21:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=4880"},"modified":"2015-07-22T13:43:28","modified_gmt":"2015-07-22T21:43:28","slug":"what-vimy-ridge-says-about-who-we-should-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/what-vimy-ridge-says-about-who-we-should-be\/","title":{"rendered":"What Vimy Ridge says about who we should be."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"My<\/a>

My kids approaching the Vimy Monument<\/p><\/div>\n

I’ve been holidaying in Europe with the family this month – England, France and soon to Estonia. \u00a0I haven’t been blogging, just soaking things up and relaxing.<\/p>\n

But today the kids and I went to Vimy Ridge and it kind of keeps with the theme of some of the reconciliation posts I made here last month.<\/p>\n

It is said that Vimy Ridge was the event that defined the young Nation of Canada, which was only 50 years old when 100,000 of it’s men, women and children (yes many many soldiers were under age) assembled on the slopes of Vimy Ridge and launched the first battle in the Arras Offensive in April 1917, a battle that would lead to the stalemate being broken and the eventual victory for the Allied forces a year and a half later.<\/p>\n

Almost 3600 Canadians were killed and another 7000 or so wounded that morning. \u00a0That is nothing compared to the losses of 150,000 French and Moroccan forces that tried to take and hold the ridge in the years prior to 1917. \u00a0But for Canada, that was and still is, the greatest single loss of life in a day of military action.<\/p>\n

Much is made of Vimy, especially these days when Canada’s military role has now fully evolved from peacekeeper to combat again. \u00a0Vimy is often evoked to draw on Canadian sentiment to gather support for our military campaigns overseas.<\/a> \u00a0As we approach the 100th anniversary of that battle, I expect the sentiment to be further reinforced, especially by politicians.<\/p>\n

But here is the thing. \u00a0You simply have to visit Vimy to really\u00a0understand this: if Vimy defined the kind of nation we are then it is a nuanced and complicated thing. \u00a0For our greatest ever battle was not celebrated by a triumphalist monument declaring our greatness (in fact a staue stomping a German helmet was rejected in the design), but rather a huge sombre memorial to the costs of war, and the responsibilities of peace. \u00a0There is simply nothing to celebrate at Vimy Ridge. \u00a0If you were to read into what Canada is by attending that site you will see the kind of country Canada is: brutal and unrelenting in its pursuit of a military (or colonial) objective, but capable of deep reflection almost immediately afterward. \u00a0Perhaps it was because Vimy was not a final victory, but simply a small part of a much much larger effort that the commemoration there is as sombre and reflective as it is. \u00a0Or perhaps it was just an acknowledgement that war is a steaming pile of horror often for unclear objectives or far distant motives of power and politics divorced from the sacrifice that\u00a0actual soldiers suffer. \u00a0Our current government parrots this same pattern, championing new military actions, while ignoring the needs of veterans<\/a> who return from these wars physically and emotionally scarred for life.<\/a><\/p>\n

The monument itself consists of a number of important figures<\/a> with names like\u00a0Sympathy of the Canadians for the Helpless, The Spirit of Sacrifice, The Breaking of the Sword, Canada Bereft\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Mourning Parents. <\/em>\u00a0Inscribed on the eastern side of the monument are the names of Canadian soldiers whose remains were never found. \u00a0The monument itself stands at the site of the objective of the battle and for several hundred meters to the west, the ground is still chewed up with craters and trenches, off limits because there is still unexploded ordinance in there, along with the bones of hundreds of human beings, blown to pieces in the battle. \u00a0It is a place alive with suffering, terror and death. \u00a0There is nothing beautiful about it, except perhaps for the birdsong, or the flock of sheep that graze the craters or the pines trees that lean upward towards the ridge top, appearing out of the corner of ones eye like some many soldiers charging for the top.<\/p>\n

It is a place that is deeply moving and powerful and it does say something about the kind of country we can choose to be. \u00a0For I wonder if we have ever really enacted the spirit of Vimy Ridge. \u00a0Of course we are a country that is a small player in the military world, but when we fight we are ruthless. \u00a0But we are also a country whose defining battle resulted in a reflection on our care for the helpless, on the practice of sacrifice, on the breaking of swords, on the deep mourning of what has happened in the name of Canada, and of the care for those who have lost children. \u00a0In this way, Vimy says something about our national need to reflect and reconcile our actions with a morality that is lost in violence. \u00a0I wonder if we have actually done that. \u00a0I wonder if we can see this as an invitation to practice these principles in an ongoing way. \u00a0I wonder if in the spirit of Vimy Ridge, if we are living up to the ideals that are emblazoned in that massive marble statue on top of a lonely escarpment in Pas-de-Calais.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been holidaying in Europe with the family this month – England, France and soon to Estonia. \u00a0I haven’t been blogging, just soaking things up and relaxing. But today the kids and I went to Vimy Ridge and it kind of keeps with the theme of some of the reconciliation posts I made here last month. It is said that Vimy Ridge was the event that defined the young Nation of Canada, which was only 50 years old when 100,000 of it’s men, women and children (yes many many soldiers were under age) assembled on the slopes of Vimy Ridge …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-1gI","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4880"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4884,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880\/revisions\/4884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}