Erin O’Toole: Canadians conquered Vimy Ridge. We can win the battle against COVID, too
Vimy Ridge #VimyRidge
Earl Sorel and Gordon Rochford, a couple of boys from Selkirk, Man., signed up for the Army on the same day.
When Sorel was wounded, on the Monday of the Battle for Vimy Ridge, Rochford pulled him into a hole created by an artillery shell. “Stay there, old boy, and someone will help you,” were the last words Rochford spoke before rejoining the advance.
Lance Sergeant Gordon Rochford was one of 2,414 Canadians who gave their lives on April 9, 1917 — what is still, to this day, the bloodiest date in Canadian history.
What remains of their friendship is a letter, written by Sorel to Rochford’s sister, Pauline, as he lay in a hospital bed in England.
We wouldn’t have this remarkable story but for the efforts of a Steinbach, Man., café owner who shared the letter with the BBC two years ago. She found it among some old papers and documents she had recently purchased.
That Vimy occupies this special place in Canadian memory and mythology is a result of how we tell our national story. Charlottetown, Quebec and London were the cities where the terms of Confederation were written. Vimy was the ridge in France where the price of our union was paid in sacrifice.
This proudly multicultural nation can point to Vimy as the place where a Japanese immigrant, Pte. Masumi Mitsui, and a son of the Douglas First Nation, Sgt. George McLean, would embody this country’s promise decades before this country would live up to its pledge to them.
On April 9, that first day of the battle, a Russian immigrant named Osip Zaveruha of Toronto and Pte. Wilfrid Perreault of the Van Doos would die mere yards from L/Sgt. Rochford. Their sacrifice is why, in 1936 when the Vimy Memorial was dedicated, King Edward VIII described that ridge as “soil which is as surely Canada’s as any acre in her nine provinces.”
Most of the world has come to view the First World War as a slaughter that produced a lost generation. Much of our nation’s future was left on the fields of France and Belgium. Many who came home were never the same again.
At more than 23,000 dead, our year-long struggle against COVID-19 has come at a greater cost of Canadian lives than any year on the battlefield between 1914 and 1918, according to the statistics provided by the Commonwealth Graves Commission.
We have said our final goodbyes through the windows of long-term care homes, instead of artillery craters. Our shows of solidarity have taken the form of sunset applauses for front-line workers instead of food rationing. Although, for many families whose lives are dependent on a small business, having to make each dollar and each meal stretch just a little farther is now too real.
Our mission now must be to prevent more losses for the next generation. As COVID-19 variants begin to ravage 20- and 30-somethings, we are forced to ask what sort of country will be there for them when we are, at last, through all of this.
Canadians are exhausted, but we must also be resolved. We are exhausted and heartbroken because we see empty chairs at our kitchen tables where loved ones once sat. We are resolved that the lessons they taught us will guide our recovery. We are exhausted by the sight of another “going out of business” sign. We are resolved to bring back the prosperity of main streets from coast to coast.
We are exhausted by case counts, death tolls and slow vaccine rollouts. But in our resolve to see this through, there is hope.
Hope for a Canadian recovery.
Hope that a country’s promissory note signed in English and French, by First Nations people and immigrants, 104 years ago on a French hillside, still has value.
This is the legacy of Vimy Ridge.
Canadians, having set their mind to something, pull together to conquer what others thought was impossible. May you have hope this Vimy Day anniversary and every day.
Special to National Post
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