Vimy Ridge monument vandalized with ‘environmental slogans’
The perpetrator in question was described as “a misguided individual with a cause,” by a spokesperson from Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC), according to Global News.
The act of vandalism, which was witnessed late Tuesday evening, has garnered a line-up of condemnation from a handful of governing officials, including Canada’s Minister of Veterans Affairs, Ginette Petitpas Taylor, who noted, “VAC officials are currently working… to ensure that the graffiti is removed as soon as possible.”
I am shocked & appalled that the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, a sacred space honouring the 60,000 Canadians who gave their lives in Europe during the First World War, was vandalized.
— Ginette Petitpas Taylor (@GinettePT) August 16, 2023
We are working with French authorities to find the person responsible.
My statement: pic.twitter.com/fdYo3i8RC0
The memorial is a long-standing and profoundly symbolic testament to 11,285 Canadian soldiers who fell in France over the course of Canada’s action in the First World War, whose burial sites we may never know.
At Vimy in particular, Canada was responsible for a historic, though casualty-heavy victory, cementing a reputation for unshakeable courage and fierce determination that would last throughout the war.
According to the Canadian War Museum, Brigadier-General A.E. Ross is said to have declared after the war, “in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation.”
Architect Walter Seymour Allward spent eleven years on its construction, adding the embodiment of Peace at its peak, which looks out from 110 metres above the earth over a landscape still riddled with unexploded mines and preserved trenches, callouses of a violent conflict that Canadian brothers and fathers died to resolve.
