Yesterday I had the honour of standing at the bottom of that famous ridge with tens of thousands of other Canadians and guests to take part in the 100th Anniversary Ceremony, at the Vimy Memorial in France. I suspect a small army of people worked to pull this assault of the ridge off too. From the inclusion of our Indigenous people in the ceremony to the original work The Torch by Kent Stetson. From Boots of the Fallen to musical performances to heartfelt speeches from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and HRH the Prince of Wales and French President Francois Hollande, and the flyover by 5 vintage biplanes and 3 French Mirages, the ceremony was splendid, moving and proudly Canadian.
It has taken 4 years of planning to insure my family got tickets, that I got time off work and that we had rooms in Arras, France. Our planning has taken a long road too. It is why it is actually very difficult for me to report that is was in fact, a pretty rotten day. Here are a few of my issues;
Things got off to a bad start when we received an email after leaving Canada, and a scant 9 days before the ceremony, that new tickets were issued to everyone and that only printed copies of those tickets would be accepted. Were it not for the help of two amazing young men working at the Juno beach centre, I'm not sure how we would have printed those new tickets, and no one was allowed onto the site without them.
Then we learned from the ladies at the Canada office in downtown Arras, that there would only be 800 parking spaces available in which people who did not attend the ceremony with a tour group would be able to park. You would need to be in the parking lot by 10 am at the latest if you expected a spot to be available. Parking would be available at the Arras train station for a hundred or so more, but the shuttles from there would only run till 12:30, and would not go all the way to the site.
Speaking of shuttles, these would take attendees from the parking lots to the Vimy site itself. For security reasons only official vehicles were going to be allowed on the Vimy site. Fair enough. All shuttles would stop running at 2 pm and you would not be allowed to enter the site after 3 pm. Problem is that all the parking, the 800 spots for drivers and the seeming 4000 for tour buses all emptied into the same shuttle lines. We arrived at the designated parking at 10:30 only to find there was already a two hour wait in line just to get through security, never mind the wait to get to the shuttles.
Bottom line as far as arrivals went was a complete mess. Tour groups should have been arriving in one location, lone travellers in a totally different location. Elderly veterans, legion members and members of the public should not have been made to wait all those hours while high school tour groups clogged up lines. This is the same situation for the seating. This should have been reserved for elderly attendees, those with small children and veterans, not on a first to arrive to the site basis. I did see one small area for vets in uniform, but I also saw many older and elderly people sitting in the grass while teenage tour groups took up seating.
Another area of issue was the inability to purchase any food. Nothing whatsoever! People were told to be at the site 5 hours before the official start of the programme, but there was not one thing available to eat at the site, at least in front of the monument where we were located, and at one point the gates were closed and barred so that you couldn't get out to see if something was available at the back of the site. Tour groups were obviously told this in advance since they provided bag lunches for the groups, but this was not made clear to anyone else.
Water and Vimy100 water bottles were provided and given the temperature and the complete lack of any provided shade, (thank the lord it didn't rain or it would have been hellish), but that created a huge bathroom issue. 4 years of planning and organizing to get myself and my family to the 100th Anniversary Ceremony and I watched the first 25 minutes of the ceremony from the 2 hour long bathroom line! In total there were 64 bathroom stalls for what I can figure about 20 000 people on our side of the monument. By 2pm there were only 24 of them functioning. I actually got into the line long before I had the sensation of needing to use the facilities.
I think it was a very important moment for Canada’s youth to see and be a part of, but I think a separate place, maybe at the back or side of the monument would have been a better location for the 9000 high school students in attendance with various tour groups. Many of these kids talked through the entire ceremony, some sat not even facing the monument or the big screens upon which the dignitaries and ceremony itself could be seen. They obviously had little understanding of why this ceremony was important. At around 5:20, with the ceremony still in full swing, many tour group leaders felt it would be a good idea to get their group of 50+ students moving toward the exit. I'm talking about hundreds of teenagers moving toward an exit about the size of two double doors. As an educator, my first issue with this is that the ceremony was still taking place why on earth are you standing up and leaving, and secondly, a group of 5 teens can't move quietly, never mind 50. This meant that there was talking through the prayer by Brigadier General Guy Chapdelaine, talking through the veterans Act of Remembrance, through the playing of the last post, and the moment of silence, talking through 3 national anthems, Canada’s included. Why on earth did school groups bring kids all the way from Canada to experience this and then want them to get up and leave before it was over? The group next to us knew enough to doff their hats for the playing of the national anthems but not enough to shut up while they were played. Kids clapped after the playing of the last post! A little pre-teaching goes a long way.
And that brings me to the leaving...guards tried to keep the crowd corralled both at the top and bottom of the monument while the dignitaries, guests and the bands left. Tour buses rolled up for the bands and flag bearers to get on, but they naturally wanted photo ops at the site and began backtracking to the monument. With the ceremony official over, and hundreds of people already at the exits, because the tour groups moved in early, thousands of people surged toward the still barred gates and the situation became quite dangerous. An older lady next to me collapsed from heat, and hunger and the sheer number of people surging together. We turned tail and went in the opposite direction, just as a gentleman decided he'd had enough and removed one of the barriers from its position. In all honesty, it's a miracle no one was trampled.
I know it was cold and that a steady sleet fell that morning 100 years ago. I know that our brave men had bombs and bullets falling all around them. I know they were hungry, tired, cold, thirsty and scared. I know because of their sacrifice I can bitch and complain about a ceremony to commemorate their accomplishment 100 years later. I understand the juxtaposition of complaining about my lack of comfort at this ceremony in particular. Sunburned, hungry and exhausted we finally returned to our car via one of the first shuttles, and we, all three are enriched for the privilege of having been here, and together in our knowledge, we'd rather have watched it at home.
Cheers,
Rachel
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