CREDIT: COURTESY OF SERGEANT VAUGHAN LIGHTOWLER
Fanshawe President Peter Devlin was Commander of the Canadian Army from 2010 to 2013. He served in Afgnahistan, Iraq, Cyprus and the Balkans.

At exactly 5:30 a.m. on Easter Monday in April 1917, the four divisions of the Canadian Corps deployed in northern France began firing their artillery at the German troops positioned on top of Vimy Ridge, near the Belgian border.

The Germans had taken the ridge early in the war and had fortified the place with guns and trenches and tunnels made with steel and concrete.

The French thought it was impregnable: They had carried three extensive attacks between 1914 and 1916, resulting in 150,000 casualties. The Germans didn’t think the Allies could capture the ridge either.

The English were sceptical, but they didn’t fare much better when they relieved the French in 1916.

Now, an army of Canadian citizens without much military experience stood facing the cold breeze, their eyes set on the ridge. It would snow later that day.

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On November 11, millions of people around the world will remember the men and women who fought for their countries, including Fanshawe College, which will hold a memorial ceremony between 10:40 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. in the Glenn Johnston Athletic Centre.

But in a time when the atrocities of early- and mid-20th century wars are so far removed from us, and Canada’s involvement in recent wars – the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War – has been limited and controversial, why remember?

“I think it’s a way to recognize what were really formative experiences in the life of the country,” said Jonathan Vance, a professor of history at Western University who specializes in Canadian and military history. “So much of the character of Canada in 2014 was determined in the First an Second World Wars and has been shaped by subsequent wars. These events affected our lives in enormous number of ways.”

One example is the dissolution of various empires, such as the fall of the German and Russian empires, in part because of the First World War. A number of countries were created from the dissolution of those empires, creating geopolitical issues that are at the centre of some of today’s international conflicts, such as the current crisis between Ukraine and Russia.

In Canada, the income tax was implemented as war effort during the First World War.

“Every time you get your paycheque and see how much you’ve lost in income tax, think back to the First World War, ‘cause that’s where it came from,” Vance said.

But Remembrance Day is not just about remembering the wars. It’s also remembering the people who lived through them, Vance said.

“We need to also keep in mind that the people who lived through it were not really that different from us,” he said. “Although it was a century ago, they walked our streets and went to our schools and worked in factories here and attended our churches. And the way they saw the world was not hugely different than the way we do.”

There’s also the peace-keeping, -making and -building missions that Canada has participated in since the end of the Second World War.

“I think that Canada has had a tremendously important and proud role in the international community, both in combat and in peace-keeping,” Fanshawe President Peter Devlin said.

Devlin was the Commander of the Canadian Army between 2010 and 2013. He fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he also served on a peacekeeping mission in Cyprus in Europe in the 1980’s and in stability operations – peacekeeping, -making and -building – in the 1990’s.

“[The country] was involved in a host of different peace-keeping missions … that provided hope,” he said. “It provided stability, and it made – in my view – a significant contribution to an international community that needed some stability in those regions of the world.”

But it’s important to remember that Remembrance Day is not about approving of war or militarism – “it’s not a pro-war thing,” Vance said.

“Remembrance Day does not celebrate war. It honours those who fought and died to stop war,” he said.

“You’re not marking the Montreal Massacre [the 1989 shooting at the École Polytechnique de Montréal that resulted in the death of 15 women] because you approve of violence of women, but because you hope that in some small way, your observing that occasion can help to prevent similar things,” he said. “Remembrance Day is exactly the same. We hope that by paying attention to the past that we can avoid getting in that position again.”

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By noon on that cold day in April nearly 100 years ago, the Canadians had done what the French and the English couldn’t: They’d captured most of Vimy Ridge. Three days later, the whole ridge was in the hands of the Allies.

But the story of Vimy Ridge is not just a war story. It’s also the story of the making of Canada.

The county went into the war as a colony of Britain. But because of its contributions – the Battle of Vimy Ridge only being one example – the prime minister at the time, Robert Borden, was able to leverage a greater role for the country in international affairs, said Vance.

“It gave Canadian national feeling a real boost, because people recognize that Canadian soldiers, primarily in France and Belgium, had great success,” Vance said. “There’s a feeling of pride connected with that and there’s a feeling that because we fought, won and died during the war, that we had matured. We had grown up as a nation.”

Canada went into the war as a child and came out as an adult, he said.

“Remembrance Day is an important day for us to reflect, for us to think, for us to give thanks, because Canada is the greatest country in the world to live in,” President Devlin said.

“And one of the reasons it is such a great place to live is because soldiers, sailors and men and women throughout Canada’s history have stood up for Canadian values.”