Canadian National Vimy Memorial Site & Battlefield Park

 memorial, museum, First World War 1914-1918

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Canada's most impressive tribute overseas to those Canadians who fought and gave their lives in the First World War is the majestic and inspiring Canadian National Vimy Memorial which overlooks the Douai Plain from the highest point of Vimy Ridge, about eight kilometres northeast of Arras. The Memorial does more than mark the site of the engagement that Canadians were to remember with more pride than any other operation of the First World War. It stands as a tribute to all who served their country in battle in that four-year struggle and particularly to those who gave their lives. At the base of the Memorial, these words appear in French and in English:

To the valour of their
Countrymen in the Great War
And in memory of their sixty
Thousand dead this monument
Is raised by the people of Canada

Inscribed on the ramparts of the Memorial are the names of 11,285 Canadian soldiers who were posted as "missing, presumed dead" in France.

The land for the battlefield park, 91.18 hectares (250 acres) in extent, was (as stated on a plaque at the entrance to the Memorial) "the free gift in perpetuity of the French nation to the people of Canada".