Lessons of Vimy

Dianne Rabel is a teacher-librarian at Charles Hays Secondary School in Prince Rupert. She makes Canada’s war history and its impact on people real by leading her students on battlefield tours—to Vimy and beyond.

By Dianne Rabel, Prince Rupert

When I started teaching twentieth-century Canadian history a few years ago, it didn’t take long to realize that there was something missing: I had never been to the battlefields. Worse still, I taught an exchange student whose excellent German education and exposure to significant sites gave him a depth of understanding I lacked.

So the next summer I went on a battlefields tour. Another summer, another tour. I was hooked! I knew that students would benefit just as I had, so the following year I took forty-two students to Vimy Ridge.

Participants were required to do several things, the most important of which was a soldier study. A few of them chose a relative, but most chose one of the names on the local cenotaph. It didn’t matter so much who they studied; the goal was that each person make an emotional connection to one of these men.

The students worked hard to piece together their soldiers’ stories. They found information online, looked at both primary and secondary documents, read through soldier files we ordered from Ottawa, combed through newspaper archives, interviewed family members and even pored over war diaries. In the end each student wrote an account that paid tribute to one man’s sacrifice.

Unfortunately none of our fallen were buried in cemeteries we planned to visit, so we did another study. This time each student took a Canadian who died at Vimy Ridge on April 9, 1917, and was buried in the beautiful Cabaret-Rouge Cemetery nearby. When we visited the cemetery, each student found the appropriate grave, planted a flag, lit a candle and shared the soldier’s story. It was a deeply moving ceremony.

We were able to fit many meaningful visits into our days in Belgium and France. In Ypres we stopped at the Cloth Hall, we found the names of more than a dozen local men on the magnificent Menin Gate, and then visited the Brooding Soldier monument at St. Julien where so many British Columbians fell in the first gas attack. The highlight of the day, especially for the boys, was a private museum at Hill 62 where a portion of a British trench system has been left untouched since 1915. Students explored the trenches, tunnels and shell holes, knowing that men from our own city fought and died on that very ground.

Students from Charles Hays Secondary from Prince Rupert at the Vimy Monument. Courtesy of Dianne Rabel

On the anniversary of the battle we were on the hill. We marvelled at the beauty of the monument. We walked where the 102nd Battalion, Northern British Columbians, fought and died. But it was a stormy day and thousands were there, so parts of the site were closed. I encouraged students to visit again if they ever had another chance. The monument is amazing to see on a sunny day, and I knew they would love to explore the tunnels where soldiers waited underground the night before the attack.

Before we moved on to Juno Beach and the German casemates that overlook the Allied landing sites of World War II, we did one more thing that isn’t on most student itineraries. Very close to Cabaret-Rouge is another cemetery for soldiers who died the same day as the men we honoured. The cemetery is Neuville–St. Vaast, and the fallen are German. Some of us even found our own surnames there.

We were immensely moved as we walked between the crosses and the memorial stones of German Jews, recognizing the common humanity.

The tour held many unforgettable moments, and no one came home unchanged.

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