Canadian Cemetery No. 2

 cemetery, First World War 1914-1918

There is a Maple Leaf on the cemetery gate although the burials here are not exclusively Canadian. As well as the many known Canadian and British soldiers buried here there are also many unknown burials. In fact, more than two-thirds of those buried in the cemetery are "Known Unto God", as the inscription on their headstones reads. Although the cemetery was started just after the Canadians took Vimy Ridge in April 1917, the majority of the graves were moved here from elsewhere, over a period of years after the Armistice. They were either moved from smaller burial grounds, isolated graves or else were bodies recovered from the battlefield as the years went by. This explains the high proportion of unknown burials.