The First World War battle of Vimy Ridge is legendary in this country.
It took place on April 9, 1917, when 100,000 young Canadian soldiers stormed the ridge in northern France, which both British and French armies had failed to take.
The battle began at 5.30 a.m., when the soldiers advanced uphill from the Douai Plain. Four divisions attacked the well dug-in German war machine, fighting together as a unit for the first time. The Canadians won the day, although they paid a terrible price.
More than 10,600 were killed or wounded as they advanced over a kind of graveyard where the earlier attacks had proved unsuccessful.
This extraordinary victory is commemorated by a magnificent memorial that stands on the high ground that was won back by Canadian infantry.
Almost a century later, also in the eerie pre-dawn, a Victoria photographer positioned himself on the same ridge. He had been hired in 2007 to shoot a series of images focusing on the newly restored memorial.
Blair Ketcheson was wide awake by 4.30 a.m., having flown from Canada the day before — “the jet lag turned out to be a bit of a blessing” — and he drove out to the ridge well before dawn to set up his equipment in a spot he had scoped out the night before.
The morning was cold and it was pitch black as he waited for first light, acutely conscious of the stillness and loneliness those 100,000 men must have felt as they waited in 1917 to meet the enemy.
As the massive memorial gradually became visible, he felt a rush of emotion.
“I had been working mechanically to get set up, but suddenly literally everything changed as the sun rose. It is a very intense place. Extremely moving. I was almost overwhelmed by its solemn beauty.
“Every person I have met or talked to who has seen it says the same thing: How it has changed them. It is a wonderful, extraordinary place .…”
At first Ketcheson saw the enormous twin towers that soar 27 metres into the sky. They were erected at the highest point on the ridge, which itself rises 100 metres above the plain.
Next, he focused his lens on the 20 figures at its base, including the striking, twice-human-size sculpture of a grieving mother.
He photographed not only the monument and its statuary, but also parts of the original trenches as well as a slender-treed forest planted over part of the battleground still honeycombed with tunnels, craters and places that are restricted due to unexploded munitions.
Since that day, he has been passionately interested in the history of Vimy.
He returned to shoot the memorial again last summer, in different light and weather conditions, and in black and white, and has exhibited his photos and spoken about the battle to community and military groups.
His images will be featured this summer in Edmonton when thousands attend the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry’s 110th anniversary, and he will give an illustrated talk in Victoria on Tuesday. (see fact box)
When speaking to school classes he asks students what image is on the $20 bill: the Vimy memorial, of course.
The memorial took 11 years to complete and was unveiled originally by King Edward VIII in 1936. But it began to degrade due to water intrusion and erosion, so a massive restoration project was undertaken four decades later.
It involved dismantling and rebuilding the platform and walls, restoring the stone’s handsome finish, re-carving all the names, cleaning 20 statues, and improving the drainage, lighting, walkways, terraces and stairs.
The Canadian government spent $30 million on this and smaller memorials in Belgium and France, and Queen Elizabeth rededicated the memorial on April 9, 2007 in a ceremony commemorating the 90th anniversary of the battle.
“I was incredibly fortunate to see the memorial in its absolutely pristine condition immediately after the restoration,” said Ketcheson. “All the books, all the movies, all the dioramas are one thing, but when you actually walk around and see the mortar craters … it’s extraordinary.
“Every square inch of that part of Europe was functional destroyed, an area about half the size of Vancouver Island.”
The memorial continues to be a touchstone for people in the service today, for those who are not always acknowledged for what they do or the trauma they suffered. About a million people visit the site each year.
Ketcheson feels deeply connected to the battle of Vimy Ridge.
“I feel honoured to have been part of the chain of events throughout its history, and to have collected many wonderful and inspiring stories about the people who were there.”
These include Ontario-born artist Mary Riter Hamilton, who went to Vimy on her own after the war and painted in the trenches to capture the rawness of the battle. She lived in huts and tents with a Canadian army contingent for more than two years, capturing images of splintered trees and scarred landscape, and became known as Canada’s first battlefield artist.
Ketcheson said he also came across an extraordinary story about a 20-year-old Canadian piper who went to France with the infantry and played his bagpipes in the trenches. He was killed when his squad was tasked with taking a German gun emplacement, and his remains were never found.
“But 80 years later, his pipes, surprisingly, were identified at a school in Scotland. They were sent to the Victoria legislature and have since been given to the Canadian Scottish Regiment, in the Bay Street Armoury.”
Response to the Vimy photos has been overwhelming — from families, individuals and military groups.
“Everybody who sees these photographs is awestruck,” said James Kempling, retired colonel of the Patricias. “They are magnificent and they commemorate a very impressive victory.”
“I also think the monument is the most magical that was erected by any country from the First World War.”
While most war memorials depict heroic soldiers holding their guns aloft, crushing the enemy, he said, Vimy shows a grieving mother and solemn statues that are reflective and contemplative.
It also carries the names of thousands of soldiers whose bodies were never found, so they have no graves.
Kempling first saw Vimy in 1967 as a young officer serving in Germany.
Years later, his 16-year-old grand-daughter was in the sea cadets and was selected to go to there after writing an essay. “She said it changed her life.”
The battle has become a symbol of unity and identity in Canada with many patriotic narratives related to it, he said.
“The British have the Battle of the Somme, the French have Verdun, the Australians have Gallipoli … For Canadians, it’s Vimy Ridge.”
The battle is especially significant because it involved all four Canadian divisions, troops from shore to shore, all fighting together for the first time.” (Canada sent more than 600,000 troops to war and had a population then of only eight million.)
“The British had failed to take the ridge, the French failed too, but after very, very thorough sophisticated planning and detailed rehearsals, the Canadians did it,” Kempling said.
“Our nationhood was born out of this battle.”
Doug Paterson, a former director of landscape architecture at UBC, said the battle is an iconic part of the Canadian spirit and identity “and displayed a brilliant piece of tactical warfare.”
Paterson was a member of the memorial’s restoration’s advisory committee, which included retired Lt-Gen Romeo Dallaire, who led the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, and novelist Jane Urquhart, who wrote about Vimy in her novel The Stone Carvers.
“I was tremendously honoured to be part of the restoration team and part of some of the greatest conversations of my life, charged with decency and love,” Paterson said.
“And I hope the importance of these photographs, the extraordinary quality of the images, and their role in telling the Vimy story to many Canadians gets across.”
Paterson, who has visited the site three times, said he had the photo of the grieving mother statue enlarged to poster size for his home. “It’s a stunning, deeply moving, amazing piece.”
In a time of turmoil in the world, and disrespect for human life, such memorials and exhibitions “help us appreciate life — and those who have given their lives,” he said.
Victoria sculptor Illarion Gallant met Ketcheson through landscape architect friends in Vancouver, and says the photos are so impressive, he now wants to go to Vimy and see the memorial himself.
No stranger to larger-than-life work — some of his pieces are 15 metres tall — Gallant said these photos are “monumental and important as representatives of Canadian culture.”
“Blair has incredible vision, compassion and depth — and his work dances.”
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WHAT: Illustrated talk about Vimy Ridge Memorial
WHERE: Trafalgar/Pro Patria Legion, 411 Gorge Rd. East.
WHEN: 2 p.m. Tuesday, April 9
TICKETS: Free
Blair Ketcheson was commissioned to photograph the Vimy Memorial in 2007, after a massive restoration effort. His talk will cover the monument’s design, construction in the 1920s and its refurbishment, and include images of his recent trip there. More info at blairketcheson.com.
