Today is a solemn day on the Canadian calendar.  It was, of course, on this date in 1917, that the battle for Vimy Ridge started in the mud and blood of wartime France.  Fighting together for the first time, four Canadian divisions began their assault on German positions.  Canadian War Museum historian Tim Cook describes what followed.“More than 15,000 Canadian infantry overran the Germans all along the front.  Incredible bravery and discipline allowed the infantry to continue moving forward under heavy fire, even when their officers were killed,” he writes.  “There were countless acts of sacrifice, as Canadians single-handedly charged machine-gun nests or forced the surrender of Germans in protective dugouts.  Hill 145, the highest and most important feature of the Ridge, and where the Vimy monument now stands, was captured in a frontal bayonet charge against machine-gun positions. Three more days of costly battle delivered final victory.  The Canadian operation was an important success, even if the larger British and French offensive, of which it had been a part, had failed.  But it was victory at a heavy cost: 3,598 Canadians were killed and another 7,000 wounded.”In the aftermath, Brigadier-General A.E. Ross of Kingston (and a member back in the day of the Frontenac Club in the Limestone City), famously wrote, “in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation.” Ross served Kingston as both the community’s MP and MPP during his remarkable career.So today we remember the sacrifice made by the Canadian soldiers at Vimy Ridge and this milestone on Canada’s road to full independence.This link provides information, prepared by the Canadian War Museum, on the sculptures that are part of the Vimy Memorial in France to this day.[caption id="attachment_263546" align="aligncenter" width="272"] Canadian National Vimy Memorial, Givenchy-en-Gohelle, France[/caption]Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.