At 5:30 a.m. on April 9, 1917, Easter Monday, nearly 1,000 Allied guns opened fire at once, and a first wave of roughly 15,000 to 20,000 Canadian infantry climbed out of their trenches into sleet and snow to attack Vimy Ridge in northern France. For the first time, all four divisions of the Canadian Corps attacked together. Within four days the ridge was theirs, at a cost of more than 10,000 casualties. Vimy is the most famous Canadian battle of the war, but it was one stop on a long, brutal road that ran from the gas clouds of Ypres in 1915 to the town of Mons on the last morning of the war. This lesson follows that road and asks what it cost and what it meant.
Trench warfare
By the end of 1914 the war in the west had become deadlocked. Two lines of trenches, the Western Front, stretched roughly 700 kilometres from the Belgian coast to Switzerland. Machine guns, barbed wire and massed artillery made it far easier to defend a trench than to attack one, so attacks across no man's land often gained a few hundred metres at a cost of thousands of lives. Soldiers lived with mud, rats, lice, cold, trench foot (rotting feet from standing in water) and constant shelling. Artillery caused more casualties than any other weapon.
| Technology | Effect on soldiers |
|---|---|
| Machine guns | Could fire hundreds of rounds a minute, cutting down attackers crossing open ground |
| Heavy artillery | Caused the majority of casualties; shelling buried men, destroyed trenches and caused "shell shock" (what we would now recognize as psychological trauma, including PTSD) |
| Poison gas | Chlorine, then phosgene and mustard gas, choked, blinded and blistered soldiers; gas masks became standard equipment |
| Tanks | First used in 1916; slow and unreliable at first, but able to cross wire and trenches |
| Airplanes | Used for reconnaissance, artillery spotting and air combat; Canadian Billy Bishop was officially credited with 72 victories, though historians debate how many can be confirmed |
| Submarines (U-boats) | Sank merchant ships and even hospital ships, threatening supplies crossing the Atlantic |
Major battles fought by Canadians and Newfoundlanders
| Battle | When | What happened | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Second Battle of Ypres (Belgium) | April 22–25, 1915 (the main Canadian fighting) | Canada's first major battle. Germany released chlorine gas, the first large-scale poison gas attack on the Western Front; French colonial troops beside the Canadians broke, and Canadians held the gap with improvised protection such as cloths soaked in water or urine | More than 6,000 Canadian casualties, over 2,000 of them killed |
| The Somme (France): Beaumont-Hamel | July 1, 1916 | On the first morning of the Somme offensive, the Newfoundland Regiment advanced into German machine-gun fire | Of about 800 who went forward, only 68 answered roll call the next day; about 700 were killed, wounded or missing |
| The Somme: Courcelette and later attacks | September–November 1916 | The Canadian Corps captured Courcelette on September 15, with the 22nd Battalion holding the village against repeated counterattacks; tanks were used for the first time | 24,029 Canadian casualties in under three months |
| Vimy Ridge (France) | April 9–12, 1917 | All four Canadian divisions attacked together under British General Julian Byng, with Canadian Arthur Currie commanding the 1st Division; careful rehearsals and a creeping barrage carried them to the top of a ridge earlier attacks had failed to take | 3,598 killed and 7,004 wounded |
| Passchendaele (Belgium) | October 26–November 10, 1917 | Currie, now commander of the Canadian Corps, warned that taking the village would cost about 16,000 casualties; his troops took it through deep mud | 15,654 casualties, more than 4,000 killed; nine Victoria Crosses |
| Canada's Hundred Days (France and Belgium) | August 8–November 11, 1918 | Starting at Amiens on August 8, the Canadian Corps led a string of victories (Arras, the Canal du Nord, Cambrai) and reached Mons on the morning of the armistice | About 45,000 Canadian casualties |
Who served
- About 620,000 people enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and about 424,000 served overseas, from a population of under 8 million.
- First Nations: more than 4,000 First Nations men volunteered, along with Métis, Inuit and non-status Indigenous soldiers whose numbers were not recorded. Anishinaabe sniper Francis Pegahmagabow of the Parry Island Band (now Wasauksing First Nation) earned the Military Medal and two bars, one of only 39 members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force so honoured.
- Black Canadians were often turned away by recruiters. The segregated No. 2 Construction Battalion, authorized on July 5, 1916, in Pictou, Nova Scotia, enlisted over 600 Black men from Canada, the United States and the Caribbean; they did forestry and construction work in France. Canada formally apologized to their descendants on July 9, 2022.
- Japanese Canadians refused in British Columbia travelled to Alberta to enlist; more than 200 did so. Sergeant Masumi Mitsui won the Military Medal at Hill 70 in 1917.
- Women: about 3,000 nursing sisters served with the Canadian Army Medical Corps, many near the front. All 14 nursing sisters aboard the hospital ship Llandovery Castle died when a German U-boat sank it on June 27, 1918.
- French Canadians served in many units, most visibly the 22nd Battalion, the only French-speaking Canadian infantry battalion to fight at the front.
Vimy: the "birth of a nation"?
Vimy is often described as the moment Canada "came of age" as a nation. Supporters of that view point to the four Canadian divisions fighting together for the first time, to Canadian skill in planning, and to Arthur Currie becoming the first Canadian to command the Corps in June 1917. Critics note that Vimy was part of a larger British offensive at Arras, that British artillery and a British commander played major roles, that the battle produced little strategic gain, and that many French Canadians, Indigenous people and immigrants did not see Vimy as a founding moment for them. The Canadian National Vimy Memorial, unveiled in 1936, made the ridge a powerful symbol of sacrifice, which shows how commemoration can shape the meaning of an event long after it happens.