Towards a More Mature View of Vimy

I was pleased to see, amid all the drum-and-trumpet coverage of Vimy, Michael Valpy's article, "Vimy Ridge: The making of a myth" in the Globe today. Valpy points out that if the British of the French had captured Vimy, it would have been a footnote in history. The myth Vimy is that it marked some kind of significant turning point, World War I's Stalingrad if you will.

Interestingly, Valpy does not touch on the stupid, enmeshed reasons why we were there in the first place. At Vimy we scored a point for the British in a European clash of imperial powers. That's all we did. The German Empire was hardly ever a threat to Canada, or even Britain. There is substantial evidence that, right up until the start of hostilities, the German leadership assumed that Britain would remain neutral.

I suppose that none of this takes away from the bravery required of Canadians who carried out British Field Marshal Douglas Haig's tragically stupid orders in France and Belgium. Nonetheless, we must be careful and very clear-eyed when it comes to considering exactly what we are commemorating this weekend.