The Vimy Myth

Today is the 89th Anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge during WWI. The battle that changed the war.

Edmonton has Le Academie de Vimy Ridge, a Junior Senior High School set up in partnership with Canada's military for Cadet education. Very nice, lots of military history on the walls of the school.

Vimy Ridge was the hill no-one could take during WWI. Until the Canadians took it using our engineering corp and artillary assault. It cost thousands of lives. But it was a major Canadian victory, and defined our relationship with the paternalistic British command. Unfortunately that relationship, one of being expendable colonial troops like the the Newfoundlanders,Australians and New Zealanders at Gallopoli, didn't really change as we were to find out at Dieppe during WWII.

The myth of Vimy Ridge is that it was Canada's military coming of age.

In reality our coming of age as a country with its own military was during the Boer War, in South Africa. Where we sent our first indpendent contingents of troops, which included the mustering of the Alberta based Lord Strathcona's Horse. Many of those involved were members of the NWMP. Showing that the NWMP/RCMP were not just a national police force but an Imperial Military force.

Canadians who participated in the South African War did so as volunteers in regiments funded by wealthy patrons or the British government.

Before Dawn has an excellent series of posts on the Boer War and Canadian involvement.

This too was an imperialist war, for the heart of Africa. A small irregular army of Dutch settlers and native Zulu fighters were able to defeat the greatest army of the day, it was the begining of the end of the British Empire. During the same period the American Empire was overtaking the British in importance, the Americans had invaded and conquered the Phillipines, Cuba and Puerto Rico during the Spanish American war.

The foundation of the Canadian Expeditionary Force was the creation of a soverign military unit of volunteers during WWI. But it was not the first volunteer army in Canada, that was created during the Boer War.

The CEF took Vimy Ridge and then were involved in the secret British attempt to invade Bolshevik Russia at the end of the war in Operation Archangel.

That assault resulted in the repression the Bolsheviks then unleashed on the left opposition and anarchists in Russia, using the invasion as the basis for claiming they were under attack from White Russians and Imperialists and that all opposition to the Bolsheviks would be considered counter revolutionary. It was on this basis that the Bolsheviks attacked the Worker Sailors Soviet at Kronstadt.
The Allies including the CEF were as responsible for the statist ending of the Russian Revolution, and the solidification of the Bolsheviks in State Power,
as was the signing of the Peace Treaty with Germany.


Also see:

WWI Xmas Mutiny

Christmas in the Trenches

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Vimy, Ridge, CEF, WWI, Russia, Boer, War, South, Africa, Canada, Gallopoli, Canada, War, military, historyKronstafdt, Bolsheviks