Anecdotes from Vimy

This week I worked at the Canadian Vimy Memorial and I hope to share with you what my days are like. 

The days move quickly at Vimy with rotations lasting between 30 minutes and 2 hours. We always have a guide stationed at the Canadian flag in the trenches sector and two in the visitor center. At these postings, we are to welcome guests and provide information and we also record statistics to better serve our future guests including nationality and arrival time. The majority of guests have so far been British and French, but Canadians typically spend the most time on site. 

Another crucial role is providing free 30-minute guided tours which are always booked day-of in the official language requested by the guest. These tours run every 30 minutes and it’s very important that our tours are neither too long nor too short. Our tours are reviewed three times during our four months, and we are given feedback so that we can improve. A guide at Vimy is often scheduled to do two guided tours a day but sometimes we give more and on quiet days we might get none. When we aren’t doing a visit, we read about the Great War or complete administrative tasks. 

We are also stationed at the cemetery on site and the monument which are one- and two-hours postings respectively. During the lunch rotation, these places are not usually manned but the security team on site is always making its rounds. Sometimes, the two-hour monument shift passes by quickly but other times it can feel like an eternity. The longest shifts are on days when it’s quiet, cold, and windy, and there are no guests and no relief from the elements. 

Every Monday, the center opens two-hours late for ‘Continuous Learning’. The first few weeks consisted of reviewing site operations and providing more information about the memorials. This week we went on a field trip to Notre Dame de Lorette, L’Anneau de la Memoire, et Cabaret Rouge. Notre Dame de Lorette is a large French cemetery and memorial on the top of Hill 163. It was really interesting how commemoration is done compared to the commonwealth where men are often buried close to where they died compared to these mass graves and cemeteries. L’Anneau de la Memoire was constructed for the 100^th anniversary of the Great War and lists all the names of those who died in the region in alphabetical order and includes all nationalities, French, German, British, Canadian, etc. Lastly, cabaret Rouge is the cemetery from which the unknown soldier was exhumed and brought to Canada to be place in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa. 

My favourite visitors so far was a group of students from RMC who came to Vimy for their term break and with them they brought a duffle bag full of Tim Horton’s coffee grounds, Kraft peanut butter and KD! It was an incredible surprise and it made all of us feel a little bit homesick. It’s nice to know that military relief is provided to Canadian students living abroad without these Canadian staples! So, if you ever come to Vimy or Beaumont-Hamel and want all the guides to love you, bring food from home!