Vimy Ridge: Why Canadians Come Here, and Why You Should Too

On April 9, 1917, all four divisions of the Canadian Corps attacked Vimy Ridge simultaneously, taking a position that French and British forces had failed to capture for two years. They succeeded in four days. The cost was 10,602 Canadian casualties. Today, the ridge is Canadian sovereign soil under a 1922 land grant from France, and it remains one of the most emotionally powerful military sites in Europe.

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial stands at the highest point of the ridge, 8km north of Arras: twin white limestone pylons rising 30 metres, visible from considerable distance across the flat Artois farmland. The names of 11,285 Canadian soldiers killed in France with no known grave are carved into the base. Walter Allward designed it over 20 years; King Edward VIII unveiled it in 1936. The weight of what the monument represents is felt more than any photograph conveys.

The Site

The memorial and preserved battlefield are free to enter, open 24 hours, no entry fees. A Parks Canada visitor centre (open daily April through November, 09:00-17:30) provides context and maps. English-speaking Canadian student guides offer free 45-minute tours of the trenches from April through November. Take the tour: the guides are well-trained, often Canadian history students, and the on-ground interpretation of the landscape makes clear what photographs cannot convey.

The preserved trenches run across 100 hectares of former battlefield. The land is still heavily cratered and cannot be farmed due to unexploded ordnance and human remains more than a century later. Visitors must stay on marked paths. This is not a precaution made for the timid: people are still occasionally injured by WWI-era shells disturbed by agricultural activity in surrounding areas.

Walk north from the memorial to the Grange Tunnel entrance. Parks Canada guides take visitors underground with helmets and lamps. The tunnel is cold (around 8°C year-round), damp, and genuinely atmospheric. Carvings made by soldiers on the chalk walls survive intact.

Arras

Arras, 8km south, is the practical base and worth an afternoon in its own right. The Grand Place and Place des Héros are adjoining 17th-century Flemish Baroque squares, entirely rebuilt after WWI destruction but done so with great accuracy. The underground boves (limestone caves) beneath the city were a WWI military headquarters and field hospital; tours run daily from the Place des Héros for around €9 per adult.

La Faisanderie on the Grand Place serves solid northern French cooking (carbonnade, rabbit, good cheese boards); lunch menus around €28-35.

Nearby: Notre Dame de Lorette

Notre Dame de Lorette, 4km west of Vimy, is the largest French military cemetery in the world with 40,000 burials. The adjacent Anneau de la Mémoire (Ring of Memory, opened 2014) lists 579,606 soldiers of all nationalities killed in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, inscribed alphabetically by surname regardless of nation. The deliberate mixing of French, British, German, and Canadian names is affecting in a way that segregated national cemeteries are not.

Getting There

From London St Pancras by Eurostar to Lille Europe takes 80 minutes. Train from Lille to Arras takes 30-40 minutes. Arras station is 15 minutes by taxi from the Vimy Memorial. From Paris Nord, direct TGVs reach Arras in about 55 minutes.