Ahead of D-Day 80th anniversary memorial ceremonies, Kimberley Walker launched the Canada Remembers Guide as a free online planner for anyone visiting the Canadian war cemeteries and many memorials paying tribute to soldiers’ sacrifices in Europe during the First World War and Second World War.Kimberley Walker/Supplied
It’s difficult for this generation to imagine the bravery demonstrated by more than 14,000 young soldiers from across Canada as they stormed ashore in Normandy, France, 80 years ago.
Kimberley Walker is making it easier to revisit the triumphs and horrors of Juno Beach.
Ahead of the D-Day 80th anniversary memorial ceremonies this week, Walker launched the Canada Remembers Guide, a free online planner for anyone visiting the Canadian war cemeteries and many memorials paying tribute to soldiers’ sacrifices in Europe during the First and Second World Wars. She is travelling to Juno Beach for Thursday’s ceremonies at the invitation of the government.
In Normandy, the guide lays out one- and two-day itineraries for exploring the stony beaches, stone-walled villages and hedgerow-lined farms where Canadians fought fierce battles to begin the liberation of France. The guide also highlights multiple tributes to the Canadian navy and air force’s contributions to the invasion in the small towns dotting the shore and on windy country roads.
A one-day tour begins at the Juno Beach Centre, opened by the Canadian government in 2003 and the site of Thursday’s ceremony, then moves to the cemetery in nearby Bény-sur-Mer, where 2,044 Canadian soldiers are buried.
Visitors then travel inland to sites such as the memorial for “Hell’s Corner” in the town of Villons-les-Buissons, where the North Nova Scotia Highlanders and Sherbrooke Fusiliers fought off counterattacks from German SS troops. The day concludes at the Bretteville-sur-Laize cemetery, where people can visit the grave of 16-year-old Gérard Doré, believed to be the youngest Canadian soldier to die in war. The graveyard is the final resting place of 2,873 Canadians.
The guide speaks to the achievements of Canadian soldiers. Only one Allied unit reached its objective on D-Day: The 1st Hussars regiment from London, Ont., which fought its way to a point 15 kilometres from the beach and took the strategically important Caen-Bayeux highway intersection.
Operation Overlord, the military’s name for D-Day, was the largest seaborne invasion ever attempted, with 150,000 Allied troops crossing the storm-tossed English Channel. It opened a three-month campaign to liberate Normandy. Canadians played a central role on all fronts: The navy deployed 124 vessels and 10,000 sailors in the channel on D-Day, while the air force had 39 squadrons of planes in the skies. More than 5,000 Canadian soldiers died in France that summer.
The two-day Normandy itinerary adds a visit to the port town of Dieppe, the site of a bloody 1942 raid and final resting place for 765 Canadian soldiers.
Elementary school Remembrance Day programs planted the seeds for the guide. “When I was a kid, I was very moved by the In Flanders Fields poem and I loved the line, ‘To you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high,’” Walker said in an interview. “I feel like maybe I am helping in some small way to hold that torch high, by showing Canadians how to find the cemeteries and memorials in Europe so that they can go, learn and pay their respects.”
To honour the soldiers of First World War battles, the guide provides one-, two- and three-day itineraries to memorials at Vimy, Cambrai and Ypres. While the National Memorial at Vimy is fittingly known as the country’s most poignant and memorable tribute to its armed forces, the guide also explores four other Canadian memorials in France at Bourlon Wood, Courcelette, Dury and Le Quesnel, as well as three in Belgium at Hill 62, Passchendaele and Sint Juliaan, site of the striking Brooding Soldier sculpture.
Walker first visited the D-Day beaches and Dieppe in the 1980s, during a one-year study abroad program in France. She looked at headstones and recalled: “At the time, I was 23 years old – and I had outlived many of the soldiers buried in that cemetery.”
The Canada Remembers Guide’s nine suggested tours build off Walker’s visits to 44 cemeteries and dozens of memorials in France and Belgium. She plans to add more itineraries to the website, including tours of Canadian battlefields and memorials of Second World War campaigns in the Netherlands and Italy.