Thank you.
My name is David Houghton, and I'm the president of the Vimy Foundation. Our mission is to preserve and promote Canada's First World War legacy as symbolized by the victory at Vimy Ridge in April 1917, which is often revered and considered a milestone in our history and birth of our nation.
About five years ago, Historica-Dominion did a poll of Canadians, and it was discouraging how few had any knowledge of Vimy or any other engagement or war Canada has been involved in. The recognition level was approximately 30% nationally and as low as 6% in Quebec. Education is a provincial domain and the teaching of history, and specifically of First World War Canadian history, is quite different depending on where you are. In Europe, Germany and France share a common textbook on the 20th century. Imagine two countries that have been at war three times in less than 100 years coming together and sharing a textbook. They are not interested in “You did this and we did that”. It's no longer us against Germany; it's a part of our history and we're not even teaching it to our own students.
Groups like us are filling that gap.
How do we at the Vimy Foundation encourage learning? We have three methods. There is something we call the Beaverbrook Vimy Prize, which is a scholarship. It's an academic competition and submissions are made via various forms. It used to be just an essay, but now we are accepting different formats in order to encourage students of different abilities. We accept artistic, video, and so forth, so that we get more participation.
The winners spend two weeks in an intense academic program in Europe, led by pedagogues. For example, in the last few years we've had an Oxford Ph.D. take students through Britain, Belgium, and France in the program. Every year 12 Canadians are chosen, along with two British and two French students. They get to go overseas. Typically, we get submissions from students in all the provinces, or close to it. We've recently received funding from Canada Heritage, in order to encourage submissions. Canadian Heritage can't cover the costs of the actual prize, but they are helping us with outreach and getting more participation across the country by spreading the word.
We also sponsor two weeks at Encounters With Canada, a well-established program here in Ottawa at the Terry Fox Centre off St. Laurent Boulevard. It's been in existence for a long time. The weeks that we sponsor are specific to Canadian war history. We call our program Vimy Week. That's a program that we devised for these weeks. This year we are sponsoring two one-week programs at a cost to us of over $100,000.
The third leg of the stool is awareness. You've seen the pilgrimage manual. We also produced the Vimy pin. The idea behind that is to have all Canadians wearing a Vimy pin on the week of April 9. I don't know if it was last year or the year before that we had every member of Parliament wearing one on April 9, but it's something that has been embraced from sea to sea to sea.
Why is April 9 and Vimy Ridge important to us? Right now Veterans Affairs does yeoman work, an excellent job of commemorating Vimy with wreath-laying ceremonies. But I would like to see a component of celebration, if that doesn't sound gauche. The Texans, who lost all but two men at the Alamo, don't apologize for that battle. In fact, it led to the bumper sticker “Don't Mess with Texas”. There were losses at the Battle of Trafalgar, the Battle of Waterloo. In Canada, for whatever reason, it's not in our nature to celebrate a victory. We're always about peacekeeping. At Vimy Ridge, it was almost as if we got the short straw on that day. It was part of a much larger battle called the Battle of Arras. We got Vimy. The taking of Vimy Ridge had been attempted by both of our parent nations, if you will, by Britain and France, at a cost of well over 100,000 casualties. It was widely regarded as impregnable.
On April 9, although our commander was General Byng--who became Baron Byng and was our Governor General after that--the battle plan itself was conceived and devised by General Arthur Currie. He used several different programs that had never been tried or implemented successfully before. He put together an attack that included a creeping barrage and the disbursement of battle plans to the men in the trenches, which had never been done before. Traditionally the battle plan was information only for the officers—and, of course, what happens is that the officers get killed in battle and then you have a bunch of soldiers who don't know what to do next. At Vimy the information was shared with everyone and that is a representation of Canada and how democratic we are. It was a very different approach to battle from that of our parent countries.
Also, the battle itself was practised for months. This had never been done before. There was a massive practice ground behind the front that allowed the various divisions to practise what it was they were expected to accomplish--their goals and so forth--and what to do in the event of a problem. Of course, the result was a great success, which I think was a surprise to everyone.
General Currie was promoted to commander of the Canadian forces and Canada has never again been led by a non-Canadian. Furthermore, the Canadian Expeditionary Force continued....
Vimy, by the way, was the very first battle in which the four Canadian divisions fought together. Previous to that our divisions were filling in various needed places in the British Expeditionary Force. At Vimy, we were together shoulder to shoulder, four divisions, 100,000-men strong.
After Vimy, Currie planned and succeeded in taking what became known as Hill 70, and then in capturing Passchendaele, and then in what is known as the Hundred Days Offensive, which very few Canadians know about.
But when all was said and done, Vimy was chosen as the site to represent our war effort. The French gave us 100 hectares of property, and that beautiful monument was produced, and now it is a pilgrimage site. It's quite an experience to go there.
Canada's efforts in the war changed the country. Not only did we sign the Treaty of Versailles, which our American allies fought greatly, as they felt it was a power play by Britain, but we also succeeded in signing because of our tremendous effort in punching above our weight, as we like to say. And the sense of Canadian pride, if you will, manifested itself on the return of the men. Not long afterwards, we sought and received what's known as the Statute of Westminster, whereby Canada actually gained full control over its foreign affairs. So Canada became a different place as a result of Vimy.
I submit to you the consideration that Veterans Affairs look into making Vimy more of a celebratory event, while maintaining of course our respect and our remembrance and so forth for the losses that have been incurred on Remembrance Day.
Thank you.