Canada
Greater than 4,000 Canuck troopers have been killed, practically 12,000 wounded taking city from Germans
Revealed Nov 10, 2024 • 5 minute learn
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Honorary Capt. Debbie Eisan, left – a veteran of the Royal Canadian Navy and elder of the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre in Halifax – and Jeff Purdy, a councillor with Wasoqopa’q-Acadia First Nation and great-great-grandson of First World Conflict veteran Sgt. Sam Glode, go to the Canadian Memorial in Crest Farm, in Belgium, which pays tribute to Canadian troopers on the Battle of Passchendaele on Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024. Photograph by Chris Doucette / Ontario Chronicle
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PASSCHENDAELE, Belgium – Greater than 1,000 folks gathered on the Canadian Memorial in Crest Farm on Sunday evening to honour the sacrifice made by Canadians to safe their freedom.
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After which the group of principally native residents lit torches and held them excessive as they walked the ultimate steps our troopers took in capturing this small city from the Germans precisely 107 years in the past.
The Battle of Passchendaele is among the bloodiest army actions in Canada’s historical past and the Belgians are perpetually grateful.
“It’s an incredible ceremony and a tribute to the Canadian effort, our costliest battle as a nation,” Corinne MacClellan, an honorary colonel within the Halifax Rifles, informed the Ontario Chronicle on Sunday.
Greater than 1,000 folks marched within the Passchendaele Remembrance Ceremony and Torchlight Procession in Belgium, in honour of the Canadian troopers who liberated their city within the Battle of Passchendaele 107 years in the past, on Nov. 10, 2024. Photograph by Chris Doucette / Ontario Chronicle/Postmedia Community
“It has never been forgotten by the people of Passchaendale and, more broadly, the people of Belgium, but also Canadians,” mentioned the co-chair of a delegation of Indigenous representatives and members of the family of First World Conflict troopers visiting Flanders Fields. “Passchaendale is a word that resonates very deeply in our DNA as Canadians.”
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“It’s just a privilege to experience it and it’s something I wish that every Canadian had the opportunity to do. It’s very weighty, but at the same time there’s a different level of pride that is attached to this ceremony.”
Belgium troopers stand guard on the Canadian Memorial in Crest Farm, in Belgium, which pays tribute to Canadian troopers on the Battle of Passchendaele 107 years in the past, on Nov. 10, 2024. Photograph by Chris Doucette / Ontario Chronicle/Postmedia Community
Greater than 4,000 Canadian troopers have been killed and practically 12,000 wounded between Oct. 26, 1917, and the time they lastly took the closely fortified excessive floor – Crest Farm – from the Germans on Nov. 10, 1917.
Within the years that adopted the top of the Nice Conflict in 1918, a monument was erected on the web site of Crest Farm to commemorate the Canadian seize of the ridge. The monument is a big block of Canadian granite, in a grove of maple bushes, with the inscription: “The Canadian Corps in Oct-Nov 1917 advanced across this valley – then a treacherous morass – captured and held the Passchendaele ridge.”
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Yearly on the night of the anniversary – since 2005 – an enormous crowd gathers for a ceremony on the monument, which is encircled in flames, as pipers and buglers play, O Canada is sung, wreaths are laid, tales are informed by family of troopers who fought within the battle, and dignitaries communicate.
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“The Battle of Passchendaele is forever etched in the history of Canada, of Belgium and of the world,” Nicholas Brousseau, Canada’s ambassador to Belgium, mentioned throughout Sunday’s ceremony.
“Tonight, as we stand here in this sacred place, we do not simply remember a military engagement – we remember the lives of those who fought, the pain and suffering they endured, and the indelible mark they left on the course of history.
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“We remember the human cost of war and we honour the legacy of those who sacrificed everything for a cause greater than themselves.
“The Canadian soldiers who fought at Passchendaele did not fight for glory. They fought for our freedom, for peace and for their comrades beside them.”
He additionally mentioned Indigenous troopers “who also answered the call to serve” should not be forgotten.
Nicholas Brousseau, Canada’s ambassador to Belgium, speaks throughout a ceremony honouring Alex Decoteau, the place a plaque was unveiled within the space the place the Cree man was killed in the course of the First World Conflict, on Indigenous Veterans Day on Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. Photograph by Chris Doucette / Ontario Chronicle/postmedia Community
Brousseau identified that males like Pte. Alex Decoteau, a cree man initially from Saskatchewan who had a monument unveiled in his honour earlier this week, and Sgt. Sam Glode from Nova Scotia, whose great-great-grandson shared his story of heroism throughout Sunday’s memorial, “volunteered to fight for a country that did not fully recognize them.
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“Today, we honour their service and sacrifice as an essential part of Canada’s history,” he mentioned.
Sgt. Sam Glode, a Mi’kmaw man from Nova Scotia, served within the Canadian Engineers in the course of the First World Conflict and was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for bravery in motion in 1918. Photograph by The Canadian Navy Engineers Affiliation /cmea-agmc.cc
Brousseau mentioned Passchendaele can be “a symbol of Canada’s coming-of-age as a nation.”
“The soldiers who fought here in the mud and blood were not just defending their country,” he mentioned. “They were shaping the future of the nation they would leave behind.
“Tonight we hold the torch high, as John McCrae’s famous poem reminds us, and say to them and to all soldiers who fought in this battle, ‘We will never forget you.’”
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Following the ceremony, torches are lit and handed out for the torchlight procession that sees the group mild up the evening because the stroll into the village sq. alongside Canadalaan – a highway lined with houses flying Canadian flags out entrance.
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In the beginning of the procession, the group marches previous Canada Gate – an iron arch erected as a companion piece to an analogous set up referred to as The Final Steps on the Halifax waterfront.
Corinne MacLellan, an honorary colonel within the Halifax Rifles, visits the Canada Gate that she helped deliver to fruition on the Canadian Memorial in Crest Farm, in Belgium, which pays tribute to Canadians on the Battle of Passchendaele 107 years in the past, on Nov. 10, 2024. Photograph by Chris Doucette / Ontario Chronicle/Postmedia Community
In Halifax, troopers’ bootprints might be seen main up a gangway and ending on the opening of the arch, symbolizing the ultimate steps of the 450,000 Canadians who shipped off to warfare on the Western Entrance – greater than 66,000 of whom by no means returned dwelling with about 30,000 laying down their lives in Belgium.
The bootprints re-emerge on the Canada Gate in Passchendaele heading towards the church within the village sq..
MacLellan mentioned she puzzled how Belgians would really feel concerning the monument when she and Flanders Fields information Erwin Ureel labored collectively to make the Canada Gate a actuality in 2017.
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The Final Steps in Halifax symbolizes the ultimate steps of Canadian troopers earlier than delivery abroad to the Western Entrance in the course of the First World Conflict. Photograph by Provided
However she knew the deep that means behind the Canadian Gate had been taken to coronary heart by locals when a busload of Belgian troopers turned up on the day of the disclosing.
“They all lined up, single file, and walked through it, which was so special to me as the co-chair of the project,” she mentioned. “It was profound.”
“Later, there was a Second World War veteran who was in his 90s and needed the assistance of his daughter to get around,” MacLellan mentioned, changing into emotional as she recalled the story. “He wanted to walk through the Canada Gate and he refused to accept any help. He had to walk through it on his own steam.”
She mentioned the locals by no means fail to indicate as much as pay tribute to Canadian troops and the troopers of different nations that liberated Belgium from the Germans.
“It’s because they live with our history around them,” MacLellan mentioned. “It’s around their schools, it’s around their communities – it happened here.”
– The Ontario Chronicle’s Chris Doucette, a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces who served within the Royal Canadian Regiment, is in Belgium and might be visiting memorial websites and attending ceremonies main as much as Remembrance Day.
cdoucette
X: @sundoucette
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