In 1914 war broke out in Europe. The fighting was soon on a scale beyond what anyone could have imagined. Over the next 4 years the conflict spread to many regions of the world and eventually became known as the First World War.

Fighting on such a scale and with such relentlessness had never been known before. By November 11th 1918 when the final gun fell silent, 9.5 million had been killed, and the lines of battle on the Western Front were essentially back to where they had begun. In 1914 Canada was a small nation, yet 68,000 Canadians never returned from the battlefields. In 1919 the Paris Peace Conference drew up treaties and revised national boundaries that in many cases revived national tensions. Today we still live with the political consequences of those decisions.

Only a handful of WWI veterans of all nationalities remain alive and when they are gone the book of living history will be shut forever. We must forget neither them nor the war they fought. The earth has not forgotten. Battles such as Passchendaele, the Somme and Verdun were so intense and prolonged that thousands upon thousands of bodies were never recovered. But every year soldiers’ remains surface in the fields and are gathered for burial in some of the 6,000 war cemeteries. We too must not forget. The families and descendants of these 68,000 Canadians must know that they have a place of honour in our hearts and in our nation’s history.

For further information on Canadians in WWI please visit the Virtual War Memorial at www.vac-acc.gc.ca or go to www.cwgc.org , www.warmuseum.ca or www.historysociety.ca/vigil