WAYFARER History
lesson à la mode
By Tania Moffat H
olly and 22 other Winnipeg high school students from Westwood Collegiate had just returned from a week-long trip through Europe with four of their teachers, exhausted but excited. Tey were gushing
about Paris, what they liked best, and how the McDonald’s in Paris sold these amazing little pastries. It sounded intriguing; the question longed to be asked...what did they go to Paris for? “We were on a historical tour of the Canadian Battlefields
from World War I,” Holly explained.
Oh...this was not the expected reply. So, what exactly did the tour entail? According to Holly their tour started in Brussels, where the priority was to stop at a chocolate
factory...strictly to refuel themselves of course. From there, the tour took a more solemn tone as it led them along the Western Front, which forms a winding line from southwest Belgium to northeastern France. While in Belgium they visited the infamous village of Passchendaele, a battlefield on which Canadians fought in both 1915 and 1917. Te following three nights were spent in a small town in
northern France, close to the Vimy Ridge battlefield. “Te ex- perience was haunting,” says Holly as she offers me her first impressions. “Vimy was really, really big. It was clean and well maintained, but it was so sad and quiet. Te battlefield was really weird. You could see all these holes and craters on the ground from the shells.” Te craters are now filled with lush grass, kept short by sheep. “People are not allowed to walk on the battlefield because of the possible danger of land mines,” she explains. Looking over the hallowed field, uncertain if a sheep was going to be blown to smithereens right before her eyes, was unsettling to say the least. She wasn’t sure if any sheep had undergone the misfortune of discovering mines in the past. Further investigation confirmed that unfortunately they had. Tere are still a multitude of unexploded shells buried on the battlegrounds.
76 • Summer 2014
The Hub
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