Canadian War Memorials in France and Belgium

Continuing our adventure from my last post....

On Sunday morning, we left Sedan, France and headed towards Vimy. Vimy was almost a 300km drive - we drove towards Reims and then northwest to Vimy. The scenery along the trip was very plain with lots of farms, fields and wind turbines. I have never seen so many wind turbines in my life as I did along this highway. We also saw 2 deer grazing in a field, but I wasn't quick enough with the camera. There were alot of horses and sheep. The land was extremely flat!

We arrived at Vimy around 11am and really appreciated the memorial site. The designer of the war memorial was Walter Seymour Allard from Toronto who won a competition for his design in 1922. It took 11 years to complete the project. I had seen pictures of the memorial previously, but had no idea how huge it was. It was a moving experience to be here and in the spot where the war was fought - it made me both sad and proud.
The Vimy Ridge War Memorial was restored and rededicated on April 9, 2007, commemorating the 90th anniversary of the battle on this field. We watched a video at the visitor's centre showing how they did this. It took almost 4 years for them to restore it.

The Canadian War Memorial is so big that it can be seen from 30 kms in every direction. At night, the centre (between the 2 massive structures) is lit up so it is never in darkness. In 1922, use of the land to construct a memorial was given by the French nation to the people of Canada in recognition of Canada's war efforts.

The visitor's centre was very interesting and was nice to see some fellow Canadian faces (and people who spoke English). All employees at Vimy Ridge Memorial site are Canadians working on site. The site also has original trenches from the war which you can walk through. The surrounding area around the memorial is loaded with craters and is blocked off with electric fence with signs posted saying "Danger, undetonated explosives" (see picture). This really brings things into perspecitve as the war was fought on this ground. We visited the Cemetary at Vimy Ridge and walked around the grounds.

We left Vimy and headed towards Passendale to see the St. Julien Memorial site. This monument is in remembrance of those who experienced the first gas attack of the war. This was much smaller, but still very interesting to see. In Passendale, we went to the war memorial museum, but it was closed, so we walked around a park that has tools used during the war on site. We also visited Tyne Cot Cemetary in Ypres where over 70% of the graves are marked with headstones which are inscribed with the words "Known Unto God". Their identities were unknown at the time of burial. Their names are all noted on a wall within the cemetary now. There are 966 Canadian soldiers buried at Tyne Cot.

At every site we visited, we signed the visitor's log. We looked through it at every site and saw people from around the world visiting the Commonwealth War Graves. One that stuck out was a couple from Halifax who visited Tyne Cot exactly one week before we were there. It was also nice to see people from other countries visiting the Canadian War Memorial sites.

We left Ypres, Belgium and drove toward Brussels and arrived late evening. Once we got into the city, we had a hard time finding our way back to our apartment. It's funny that when you travel by train and subway, you pop up like groundhogs every once in awhile, but never really know how you got there. I've mentioned before that in Brussels, there is a lack of stop lights and roundabouts - the rule of the right applies at all intersections - so, me being on the right side of the car, I was gripping the door like a maniac and my eyes were darting back and forth (like that was going to save me).
On the way home, we spotted the Atomium (building shaped like an iron atom which was built for the World Expo in 1958). It was all sparkly and nice so we stopped to admire it. I have seen it during the day, but this was a first at night. We made it home after about an hour of driving around Brussels, unpacked the car and headed back out to the airport to return the rental.

It was a great weekend - we saw so many interesting things that were on our "list" of things to see. I am no longer nervous about driving in Europe - it's the same as home, just alot faster!