Event commemorates monumental achievement

Canadians don’t typically sing their own praises, but Turner Valley Legion members are encouraging just that this weekend.

The Royal Canadian Legion in Turner Valley is inviting High Country residents to participate in Birth of a Nation Day on April 9, celebrating Canada’s monumental achievement at Vimy Ridge during the First World War 99 years ago.

“Canada is a very shy country - we don’t stand up and say, ‘Pick me!’” said Gordon Day, advisor with the Royal Canadian Legion in Turner Valley. “Canada won the Battle of Vimy Ridge and started the winning of WWI. If it wasn’t for Canada, Germany would have taken over France and things would have gone another way. It was the birth of our recognition as a nation.”

Day started the celebration in Turner Valley almost a decade ago, organizing a ceremony that marks the day the battle began on April 9 in 1917.

This year’s event begins with a parade starting at the Dr. Lander Memorial outdoor swimming pool in Turner Valley at 6 p.m. and ending with a ceremony at the cenotaph and inside the legion hall.

In the spring of 1917, all four divisions of Canada worked together for the first time and won the most complete offensive victory up to that point in the war.

“It was just ordinary people off the street wearing a uniform in the underground tunnels,” said Day. “The whole operation was miraculous and it was all done right underneath the Germans’ feet.”

This military achievement raised Canada’s international stature and helped earn a separate signature on the Treaty of Versailles, identifying Canada as a nation in its own right.

“Even Kaiser (Wilhelm II) said it was a magnificent operation and even (Adolf) Hitler respected it,” Day said. “He said if anybody during World War II attacked the Vimy Memorial they would be dealt with quite severely.

“We still have the respect of the world for our military forces and operations.”

Although not a veteran himself, Day was president of the Royal Canadian Legion Turner Valley Branch 78 for 25 years and values the significance of the event.

“Our focus is different from most of the people that are battling,” he said. “Canadians just want to get the job done and get home.”

In celebration of Birth of a Nation Day, the Royal Canadian Legion will have a piper, the ladies auxiliary, members of the legion colour party, firefighters, cadet groups, Scouts Canada and gymnastics clubs to march in the parade, with members of the public encouraged to join in.

Silver Cross Mother Claudette McGregor will lay a wreath at the cenotaph and guest speaker Susan Raby-Dunn, of Longview, will do a presentation inside the legion hall.

Raby-Dunne, who wrote the fictional novel Bonfire – The Chestnut Gentleman about Major John McCrae’s horse, is working on a novel about McCrae fighting in the First World War and will talk about McCrae and detail the Battle of Vimy Ridge through his experience via a power point presentation, showing several photographs.

“I just think that World War I really shaped the character of Canada,” she said. “I try to make people understand that there was only 8 million of us in Canada (at that time) and 600,000 Canadians served in WWI and about 10 per cent of them were killed.”

Raby-Dunne said so many Canadian men returned home with catastrophic injuries after the war.

“They were terribly wounded, but also with serious shell shock and unable to contribute to society ever,” she said. “I heard stories of somebody who had an uncle in the attic for 30 or 40 years. He just couldn’t cope with World War I.”

Raby-Dunne hopes she can provide an interesting perspective on the war through the research she’s done for her book on McCrae.

“Because I’m working on this book right now, I’m doing something that hasn’t been done or published in that I’m using his war diary, brigade diary and other sources that haven’t been used in any books before,” she said.

Raby-Dunne said she will have the first draft of her book on McCrae submitted to the Heritage House Publishing Company at the end of April.