The historical power of this event has been and continues to be mobilized by successive Federal governments linking the centennial anniversary of the battle in 2017 to Canada’s larger sesquicentennial celebrations. These works have all contributed to a narrative that has become especially powerful in the 21st century as Canada, for the first time in over 50 years, found itself at war in Afghanistan (2001-2014). Since the 1960s and the 50th anniversary of the First World War, hundreds of books and articles have been written about it, most notably Pierre Berton’s 1986 Vimy. When it came down to it, Canadian media outlets showed little interest in our project and returned repeatedly to a small community of Canadian historians and commentators who were invested professionally and politically in Vimy’s continued importance.įor many historians, history buffs, and historically aware Canadians, Vimy has become a touchstone that covers the whole of Canada’s experience of war from 1914 to 1918. We were largely unsuccessful, however, in impacting the broader understanding of Canada’s First World War history and undermining the dominance of the Vimy myth.

We published almost 70 articles by historians both professional and amateur, and with little institutional and no financial support, garnered significant attention within the Canadian historical community. We did publish one article on Vimy, by Canadian War Museum historian Nic Clark, but the article’s critique of Vimy’s place in Canada’s mythology supported this goal. One of those narratives that most dominate this history and most obscure others is the Vimy mythology, and one of our primary goals was to finally expose Canadians to the problems associated with viewing Canadian identity and nation building through a Vimy-hued lens. We wanted to give voice to stories that had been lost in more monolithic narratives, to question accepted mythologies and to lift up subaltern histories that had been ignored. Over the course of the last five years, four collaborators (Mary Chaktsiris, Sarah Glassford, Christopher Schultz, Nathan Smith) and I curated the “Canada’s First World War” series for ActiveHistory.ca that sought to problematize and expand our understanding of Canada’s experience of the First World War. The Vimy mythology has an enduring power. Especially tiresome is the intellectual work of critiquing the reification of Vimy’s nationalist mythology, a topic that seems to come up annually when its anniversary rolls around.

As a historian of Canada’s involvement in the First World War I get awfully tired of talking and writing about the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

Vimy by Pierre Berton