by Mac Johnston

Top: The Hill 204 Memorial erected by the CBNF and regimental associations lists the units that breached the Gothic Line in Italy. Above: Dominion President Allan Parks (left) and Dominion Secretary Duane Daly place a wreath at the Canadian Memorial Garden in Caen, France.

As the passage of time takes a continuing toll on Canada’s veteran population, the challenge of recognizing their contributions is increasingly being taken up by others.

One such group is the Canadian Battle of Normandy Foundation, formed in 1993 by veterans and other interested Canadians with three purposes: 1) to promote public awareness of Canada’s roles in the wars of the 20th century; 2) to encourage study of these events and 3) to perpetuate the memory of deeds accomplished by Canadians.

The foundation’s first decade has definitely proven to be Mission Possible. One of the CBNF’s major achievements is the Canadian Memorial Garden located on the grounds of Le Memorial museum in Caen, France. Opened in May 1995 by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, the garden was designed to honour all Canadians who fought in Normandy during WW II.

What makes it unique is the way it breaks with tradition. Visitors won’t find a space full of flowers, shrubs and trees like the American garden at Le Memorial, but they will find multiple references to war and peace–allusions that are worked into the landscape with the sole purpose of triggering an emotional response. “Every element in our garden has some kind of meaning behind it,” explained Celine Garbay, the CBNF’s head summer guide at Le Memorial. “And even though the people who designed it had one vision, there are so many other ways of interpreting what you see. And so in that sense it is like modern art.”

In August 1993, the CBNF brought a dozen university students over to Normandy. Their mission began with visits to the beaches, battlefields and cemeteries important to Canadians. Interestingly, these weren’t students of military history. Instead, they came from the School of Architecture at Carleton University in Ottawa and from l’Ecole d’Architecture Paysagiste at the University of Montreal.

After completing their site visits, the students were divided into groups and spent several weeks exploring ways to express what they had learned, seen, felt and heard. Ideas were developed and, following a selection process, a plan was put into action. The result is a garden that occupies a wide strip of land running across the western end of a valley that was once home to a medieval quarry.

From the museum, visitors reach the garden by walking a short distance along a road lined with oak trees. They then pass a Canadian flag located near a stone terrace. The face of the terrace dominates the valley below and for some visitors symbolizes the Atlantic Wall that had to be breached by Allied forces. For others, the amount of stone in the terrace represents the amount of military equipment that had to be brought in by the Allies to achieve victory in Normandy.

Four glass stelas on the terrace list the names of all the Canadian military units–sea, land and air–that fought in the Battle of Normandy.

From the terrace, visitors descend a flight of steps to a granite plaque inscribed with the words Liberation Comes From The Sea. After that, they follow a zig-zagging path down an embankment to the valley’s grassy floor where the lack of cover creates feelings of being exposed or vulnerable to attack.

After crossing the valley, visitors arrive at a horizontal black slab that is set among a grove of sycamore trees planted to resemble maple trees. A clear sheet of water runs over the slab which is inscribed with Latin words meaning No Day Will Ever Erase You From The Memory Of Time. “Those words apply to the soldiers who fought here and never came home. But it also applies to the soldiers who fought and then returned home changed forever, and the affect that had on their families,” explained Garbay.

The reflective pool also says something about the military buddy system. Standing at the front of the pool, you can’t see your own reflection, but you can see the reflection of your buddy standing at the opposite end. And likewise, your buddy can’t see his reflection, but he can see yours. “And this is so important because in the military you are nothing if your buddy isn’t looking after you and he is nothing if you are not looking after him.”

Inscribed on a wall behind the pool are the names of 122 Normandy communities liberated by Canadian soldiers in WW II.

Turning around and looking back at the terrace on the far side of the valley, visitors notice a black fissure in the stone facade. This, explains Garbay, represents man’s descent into the turmoil of war and danger. The garden truly is a place where nature mingles with memory.

Though the CBNF has pumped $1.3 million into the garden, and provides student guides at Le Memorial each year, the foundation’s signature project may well be its annual study tour for Canadian university students. Since 1995 they have travelled to Europe for two to three weeks under the direction of military historians. Normandy has been studied in great detail, but other sites have included Dieppe, as well as the Scheldt and Rhineland campaigns. This year the tour marked the 60th anniversary of the Italian Campaign. (See page 22.)

The study tour program is popular with students, attracting more than 50 applications this year for only 10 spots. The students pay $1,200-$1,500 each and the balance of the cost is covered by interest from the CBNF bursary trust fund.

“There’s about $750,000 in there, which is not quite sufficient, particularly with the interest rates that this money returns to us right now,” says CBNF President Charles Belzile, who is also Dominion Grand President of The Royal Canadian Legion. “So we have to pluck into the operating money. The operating money basically comes from donations from a great variety of donors and from our members. We have some 400 members in the foundation, which pay an annual due which is very modest at $25 and that allows us, of course, to finance such things as newsletters and to mail information to most of our members, a lot of which, of course, are veterans besides the students and people with general interest in military history.

“So we constantly are seeking assistance. We go after foundations with similar aims. We go after corporations…. In the case of the bursaries, we’ve gone after a combination of both, including some family foundations, who for a certain amount of money up front, enough to generate the equivalent of one bursary per tour, are offered a seat on the board…. We, of course, name that bursary after their foundation or their organization, such as the Legion one, which was put in there at my request as a 75th anniversary gift of the Legion.”

Lieutenant-Colonel David Patterson, the 2003 study-tour director, comments: “…The tours are the centrepiece, they are what we are raising money to maintain, to guarantee we can do them in the future. …Because fundamentally, you have to see the ground to truly understand what they did. You can read a lot of books, you can look at maps…. But when you’re going…to Italy, you see Assoro, that’s when you finally understand how great an achievement it was for them to climb up that hill. When you see Monte Cassino and how it dominates, and those things, and you see how Ortona and the gully, the actual places…no amount of words or books or maps or even pictures can portray, or compare with being on the ground.”

Professor Terry Copp of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., is a CBNF stalwart. He says: “I think it has an enormous impact on the young people…. Over the last six or eight years we’ve probably produced a cadre of Canadian high school teachers and professors…that will have a real impact upon what happens in Canadian high schools and universities. …We’ve had lawyers and engineers and chemists and people who are medical doctors, people who’ve became professionals in the business community. I often argue that it’s as important that they know about Canada’s military experience and have some understanding of it as is the ones who choose to make it their career.”

Lee Windsor of the University of New Brunswick was a student on the first tour and is now a guide/historian. Here’s his perspective: “…Because military matters are not very popular in this country, there are not that many people who have a base awareness in what these actions that these veterans performed really mean and what relevance they have to our country and why it is that we should consider them important….

“A lot of people see war as this irrational, terrible occurrence. They look at war through the eyes of historians of the Great War, who see it as a tremendous tragedy, or natural disaster even, that befalls private soldiers, perhaps even perpetrated by politicians and generals. And sometimes we lose sight of the fact that we have entered great wars of the 20th century as a country willingly in an effort to secure goals we believed then, and we still believe now, are worth protecting with force. Those being democracy and the unfailing right or the rights of all humans to live free from fear, free from hunger, free from poverty, free from want.”

Major Michael Boire, an assistant professor at Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., was also a guide/historian on the 2003 tour. He comments: “Well, Canada’s military history has yet to be…really developed. Not much has been done. We have official histories and we have a few books, but a lot still has to be done. So the first thing a student picks up having seen the ground here is an appreciation of what’s already been written. The second thing that has to be learned is an appreciation of the military skill and that happens. An appreciation for and an understanding of the sacrifices that were made by these brave men. And where it fits into the wider and grander history of a country….”

Peter Wright, a McGill University graduate and young lawyer who participated in the 2003 tour, says: “I think it performs a tremendously useful role in…getting the message out and introducing it to young Canadians so that in the future they may perpetuate…the memory of what was done here 60 years ago…. I think the role played by the Canadian Battle of Normandy Foundation is indispensable, because it’s probably the most hands-on approach to the perpetuation of this memory of any group I can think of.”

The foundation is now considering changing its name to better reflect its wide interest in Canadian military operations overseas. For more information about the foundation, to join or to make a branch or individual donation, write Canadian Battle of Normandy Foundation, c/o Canadian War Museum, 330 Sussex Dr., Ottawa, ON K1A 0M8. The CBNF is a registered charity which can issue receipts for tax purposes. You can also check out its Web site at www.canadianbattleofnormandyfoundation.ca.