IDK, maybe I just wanted to go here and didn't realize it, but something triggered slightly yesterday morning early, and again just now. Yesterday's email from "this day in history" concluded with (scroll down) a piece about World War I, April 12, 1917, Canadian forces capturing the German position at Vimy Ridge in France. It didn't click with me until this morning, when I opened yesterday's email from Winnipeg Free Press and read the editor's essay "Remembering Vimy Ridge".

How I connected with Winnipeg Free Press I don't remember, but Why I do remember. Shortly after retiring from the U S Navy on 1 Feb 1978, I had a consulting contract through the Canadian Consulate in Philadelphia, with their Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce, to teach their defence industry companies how to work with the U S Department of Defense. It's been forty-five years, and I don't recall the arrangement as being highly successful, but I do remember traveling to Ottawa that winter to attend a conference of some sort, at which I was introduced to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, father of their present PM; and I especially recall a visit to Winnipeg to conduct a two-day seminar for Manitoba companies interested in developing defense-related business in the United States.

Two recollections, and that's all. I remember nothing about that seminar except that it resulted in a large contract for some company or other. At the same Time, I had a similar contract with the Australian Department of Defence, through the Australian Embassy in WashingtonDC, to conduct similar seminars in Canberra, Sidney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide, which led to a six-year stint of business and travel throughout the United States and to Australia and back, from winter 1978 until summer 1984 when I finished theological seminary and we relocated from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Apalachicola to start the destined life as Episcopal priest that I'd suspended as a University of Florida sophomore in 1955.

Rambling again, T.

Winnipeg. My Canadian contact in Philadelphia arranged a defense industry seminar in Winnipeg, for me to conduct. I think it was March 1978, but I remember two things.

One, that in the Winnipeg hotel where they put me up (which may also have been the seminar venue), the first night, I had supper in the hotel dining room. On the menu, I ordered the fish. I don't recall the name of the fish or how it was cooked, but it was red flesh and delicious. The waiter told me it was caught from deep under the lake ice. Seems like he said "sunshine fish" but I can't find it on google.

My other memory of those two or three days in Winnipeg is the snow. The sky was clear blue while I was there and not snowing, but the snow was piled high. To find my way to a shop I wanted to go to, the hotel front desk manager had to draw me a map, which was like a maze, because the snow on each side of the sidewalk was seven or eight feet high, and all I could see was snow. A maze through the snow. Me, I was 42 years old, but Winnipeg holds a place in my heart and mind as maybe my earliest venture into private business.

So, I receive the Winnipeg Free Press, free edition, not paid subscription, by mail most every morning.

Anyway, until this morning, I'd had no idea of the place that Vimy Ridge seems to have held in Canada's national history mythology, which seems like a sort of Heilsgeschichte. Holy stories that are "our stories," like the holy family making their way to Bethlehem, and the various Marys meeting angels at the empty tomb.

It's Easter Thursday. From the lectionary, here's our holy story for today:

The Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

1 The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath[a] enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”

WORLD WAR I

1917

Canadians capture Vimy Ridge in northern France

This Day In History: April 12, 1917

After three days of fierce combat and over 10,000 casualties suffered, the Canadian Corps seizes the previously German-held Vimy Ridge in northern France on April 12, 1917.

Many historians have pointed to the victory at Vimy Ridge during World War I as a moment of greatness for Canada, when it emerged from Britain’s shadow to attain its own measure of military achievement. As a result of the victory, earned despite the failure of the larger Allied offensive of which it was a part, Canadian forces earned a reputation for efficiency and strength on the battlefield.

The Allied offensive—masterminded by the French commander in chief, Robert Nivelle—began Easter Monday, April 9, 1917, as British and Canadian forces launched simultaneous attacks on German positions at Arras and Vimy Ridge, a heavily fortified, seven-kilometer-long raised stretch of land with a sweeping view of the Allied lines. The first day was overwhelmingly successful for the Allies, as the British punched through the Hindenburg Line—the defensive positions to which Germany had retreated in February 1917—and overran sections of two German trench lines within two hours, taking 5,600 prisoners.

The Canadians, attacking over a stretch of land littered with the dead of previous French attacks on the same positions, also moved swiftly in the first hours of the offensive, as four Canadian divisions stormed the ridge at 5:30 am on April 9, moving forward under cover of a punishing artillery barrage that forced the Germans to hunker down in their trenches and away from their machine guns. More than 15,000 Canadian infantry troops attacked Vimy Ridge that day, overrunning the German positions and taking 4,000 prisoners.

Three more days of heavy fighting resulted in victory on April 12, when control of Vimy was in Canadian hands. Though the Nivelle Offensive as a whole failed miserably, the Canadian operation had proved a success, albeit a costly one: 3,598 Canadian soldiers were killed and another 7,000 were wounded.

Vimy Ridge became a shining example of Canada’s effort in the Great War, and one that served as a symbol of the sacrifice the young British dominion had made for the Allied cause. As Brigadier-General A.E. Ross famously declared after the war, in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation.

In 1922, the French government ceded Vimy Ridge and the land surrounding it to Canada; the gleaming white marble Vimy Memorial was unveiled in 1936 as a testament to the more than 60,000 Canadians who died in service during World War I.

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Remembering Vimy Ridge

On Easter morning, I finally cracked open a book that has languished on my to-read list for longer than I care to admit.

The reason I began that long-awaited read of Tim Cook’s Vimy on April 9 was deliberate. On that fateful day 106 years ago, Canadian soldiers went over the top and began the battle and legend that’s the subject of his national bestseller.

The Canadian Corps were able to take Vimy Ridge in just four days, far faster than I’ll get through the 394 pages of Cook’s book. But I already had in motion another way to honor the 10,000 Canadians killed or wounded in that epic battle.

On the front page of our Sunday e-edition, I ran a story about a high school student from Winnipeg who is in France for a Vimy pilgrimage. Aidan Nowicki had taken a pebble from Winnipeg to place on the gravestone on Pte. Ernest James Smith, who had called Silver Heights home.

“I placed it on top of the headstone just to give him, in a way, a piece of the home that he never came back to. It was very saddening to the heart,” Nowicki told reporter Tyler Searle.

Vimy has been front page news in the Free Press since the first shots of the battle. On our April 10, 1917 edition, the headline across the top of the page screamed: CANADIANS STORM FAMOUS VIMY RIDGE.

The front page of the Winnipeg Free Press, April 10, 1917.

Over the four days of the battle, Vimy was a constant on the front page until the celebratory headline announced: CANADIANS CLEAR ENEMY FROM LAST POSTION ON RIDGE.

The subhead was a nice exclamation point on that victory: “Enemy had orders to hold positions at all costs but were unable to withstand attack of Canadians.”

From the front page of the Winnipeg Free Press, April 12, 1917.

In his book, Cook delivers more than a tribute in his retelling of the Vimy story.

“The capture of the seemingly impregnable ridge by Canadians from all regions is a built-in unity story,” Cook writes.

“Vimy has been described as a key event in Canadian history, even the origin of the modern country, but what that means in (now) is different from what it meant in 1992 or 1967, in 1936 or 1917. Vimy’s meaning has shifted with each generation, but it has usually been an important symbol.

“The Vimy idea is admittedly not universally accepted. Our heroes and legends are rarely all things to all people. Canada is a country – like most – that places little stock in history, teaching it badly, embracing it little, feeding it only episodically.

“As Canada developed over time, we cast aside much that grounded us in the past; yet there are some ideas and myths and icons that persistently carry the weight of nationhood. Vimy is one of them.”

I take some pride that part of Cook’s research to get the history of Vimy right included drawing on the Free Press, in particular the writings of the legendary John Dafoe who sat for 43 years in the editor’s chair.

I also take comfort that on the 106th anniversary of Vimy, a 17-year-old like Nowicki was on that famous ridge learning about its history – rather than being part of it, as would have been the case in 1917 when so many Canadian teens and young men were marching across its killing field.

Paul Samyn, Editor