I'd pay to see that Heritage Minute

Judging by the front pages of the newspapers today, it would seem to be obligatory to spare a moment or two today to talk about the Battle of Vimy Ridge. I happened to have a high school history teacher who was something of a Vimy nut—like, if they had Vimy Ridge conventions he'd be the guy there dressed up as a Klingon. Consequently, I've always had this air of detached expertise whenever the subject of Vimy came up. It's all seared into the databanks upstairs: rolling artillery barrage, Arthur Currie, prior failed attempts, surprisingly low mortality rates. That's before we get into the whole business of national myth-making and the contrast between us and the Aussies at Galipoli and birth of the nation and our glorious dead.

What I'm sorta getting at in a roundabout fashion is that there's very little that's said about Vimy that doesn't sort of prompt at least a teensy bit of eye-glazing, simply because I've heard it all before. That's why I got so excited this morning when I read something intriguing about Vimy that I can't recall having heard in the past. That might have been a moment in Mr. Prowse's class where I was staring at the girl in front of me or something.


Now, there are plenty of other fun blogs and the internet where you can get your daily fix of hip-hip hurraying Hitler. This is not one of those blogs. Hitler had a, shall we say, particularly creative relationship with the concept of pacifism: this is the man who was none too keen on his WWI experiences himself but then seemed to devote his life to inflicting the horrors of war on others. This little Vimy anecdote though, really continues to fill in some of the quirkier blanks in my own understanding of the guy.

In fact, I have to say it's prompted a little curiousity as to why this aspect of the Vimy story isn't included in the conventional grab-bag of coverage of the battle that gets reproduced every few years. I mean, I don't think anyone reading that article is about to write to the Bank of Canada asking them to stick in a portrait of the führer on the back of the ten dollar bill in celebration to his remarkable contribution to Canadian heritage. But the fact that even the most sadistic of men could see the Vimy monument's rejection of triumphalism and respected its message of universal peace strikes me as one of the more resonant commentaries on Canada's military history.