9:10 p.m., April 8, 2017 Nice, France Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the Canadian victory at Vimy Ridge, l’arete de Vimy. It was an battle which caught the imagination of English speaking Canada then, and continues to resonate in the country even today. For years, I planned to commemorate the event by being there, standing on the road that marks some of the Canadian front lines at the exact moment in the early morning that the Canadian assault began. Easter Monday, 1917, with snow falling, thousands of men swarming out of the noisome, crowded tunnels where they had hidden for days from enemy eyes and enemy shells. It was the present I planned to give myself for my 60th birthday, which was Monday April 3. But, that’s not how things worked out. Like the Canadian
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