Piddingworth Greg Benton |
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| 'Piddingworth...where St. George's Cross is not yet banned.' --Mark Steyn |
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| Live as free people, yet without using your freedom as a pretext for evil; but live as servants of God. (1Peter 2) |
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| BE YOURS TO HOLD IT HIGH. Over 3600 students from Canada joined others in April at the re-dedication of the Vimy Memorial in France by the Queen and commemorating the 90th anniversary of the battle in which the Canadian Corps fought as a unit for the first time. The taking of the Ridge on 9th April 1917 was a significant part of the overall Battle of Arras. Over the years, the mythology of the Battle for Vimy Ridge has grown partly based on the observation by a Canadian officer that, 'in those few moments I saw the birth of a nation'; because it was the first time that the whole Canadian Corps, then a part of the British Army, had fought as a unit (although alongside other British Corps), the invention of some is that this implied some kind of anti-British 'victory'. The truth is that whilst the event did signficantly lay the foundation for the establishing of a national identity that earned the Dominion of Canada, and the other Dominion governments as well, places at the Treaty of Versailles, alongside that of the United Kingdom, the Canadian identity remained very strongly British in every respect not in any way resembling that of the current version of Canada promoted by the Canadian government.. Incredibly, shamefully, and even more tellingly, no mention was made by anyone at the ceremony of Britain, England, Scotland, the Royal Flying Corps, or even the others of the British Army who fought and died there. When one notes that more than half of the Canadian Corps consisted of UK-born men and that Canada was a Dominion of the British Empire at the time, it underscores the political/historical revisionism that exists within the government of Canada that in the past few decades has downplayed, forgotten and in some places reviled its association with Britain in order to project its new 'multi-cultural, bi-lingual' (French/English) identity; almost as if that was the purpose of the battle itself. The Vimy Re-Dedication, under the banner, 'Honour The Legacy', unlike the original in 1936 by Edward VIII, became an occasion for the government (not the people, vets or soldiers) to promote this faux-nationalism that, by turning its back on the men, their loyalties, their attachments to Great Britain and the Empire, in fact dishonoured them and their memory. For most of the young people who attended, of course, it was an opportunity t o show their pride in their country as well as respect for the soldiers who fought and died at Vimy. By most accounts, the ceremony itself, organised by Veteran's Affairs, was, apart from the propaganda, very well done with some moving tributes. Teachers & students from St. Mary, Pickering, led by superb teachers Craig & Andrea Zimmer, Jack Cecillon, John Stanešic & Lucy Deluca, all Friends of Piddingworth, waved the Union Flag under which Canada's soldiers fought, along with the Maple Leaf, amidst the throng. They held high the torch handed to them by their forebears as they learned the history of the Great War and visited sites in Arras, Vimy, Normandy, as well as Paris and in London where they visited the Imperial War Museum.. Sgt. E.M. Leonard, from Plymouth, Devon, who fought at Vimy, was remembered by the group who were given pamphlets from Piddingworth that told of him. Each of the groups of students were 'assigned' the grave of a soldier and theirs was that of Lance/Corporal Richard Dennis, from Kent, England, who went to war from Chatham, Ontario and was killed in 1915. The students were led in a service of prayer and remembrance after which they left a poppy and copy of the Leonard programme by his grave. |
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| Grave of L/Cpl Richard Dennis 1st Battalion, Western Ontario Regiment Caberet-Rouge British Cemetery, Souchez, France |
| THE WARRIOR'S LAMENT - A MÉTIS PRAYER - BY SIERRA NOBLE AT THE VIMY MEMORIAL Download |
| VIMY |
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