Dick Gilbert brought his grandfather with him to the Vimy Ridge memorial service Sunday morning at the centotaph.
While a small crowd of about 200 gathered at the site in front of city hall to hear speeches and prayers for the tens of thousands of Canadian soldiers who fought that infamous battle in northern France 100 years ago, Gilbert held the framed certificate of service originally presented to his dad's father, Daniel, who was wounded in the battle.
The day before 170,000 troops from four Canadian and one British divisions began their major assault to retake Vimy, which had been held in German hands for three years, they found Daniel Gilbert, part of 188th (Saskatchewan) Battalion.
"He'd been blown up and he laid there four days under a pile dead bodies when they noticed he was still alive," said Dick Gilbert. "He was blown up April 4th and they found him on the 8th and he spent 10 months in hospital before he got back to Canada."
D.G. Gilbert's certificate of service features his photograph below the words, European War For King and Empire and it is one of his grandson's most cherished possessions.
Originally from England, Daniel had settled near Yorkton, Sask., with his four brothers, two of whom went overseas for the First World War. He spent his remaining years in Saskatchewan and died in 1972. At the time he was fighting in France, he'd been overseas for seven months, while his two-year-old son Phillip, Dick's father, was living on the family homestead just outside of Yorkton.
"He was severely wounded with shrapnel wounds, including one that kept my father an only child," said Dick. "He said he left his best parts over there. That was about the only smile he had about the whole thing. He would not talk about it. It wasn't anything that brought joy. Even in his memoirs, he doesn't make a big deal of it.
"He was blown up at Vimy Ridge and lived to get back. I thought, this is 100 years and I wanted to let him know, people haven't forgotten."
The fight for Vimy Ridge, part of the Battle of Arras, is known as the nation-building event which united Canada, a country just 50 years old at that time. It resulted in 3,600 dead and 7,000 wounded, as well as untold numbers of German casualties. It was the first time all four Canadian divisions had fought together. Most of the ridge was captured on the first day of an assault which went on for four days and they completed a task which had eluded all other Allied military attempts the previous three years.
"This is an important day to remember Canada was essentially a colony of the British Empire back in the early-1900s and Vimy Ridge was the day that was reckoned as the day Canada became a nation," said Walter McCue, commanding officer of the Rocky Mountain Rangers Cadet Corps.
"We paid for it with the blood and trauma of four days of fierce combat with the German forces. A generation, essentially, was lost in that war."
The 100th anniversary ceremonies Sunday at the Vimy Ridge monument northeast of the town of Arras, France, attended by the leaders of Canada, France and England, attracted a massive crowd which including 25,000 Canadians and 12 cadets and their officers from the Prince George-based Rocky Mountain Rangers. That it was such a big event was no surprise for Terry Murphy, who rode his bike to the cenotaph on Sunday.
"It totally shaped our country, those men went over and gave their lives for peace and to end the war and it's great to see us remembering the 100 years now - it's all over the TV and for Prince George to be part of it is special," said Murphy, who emigrated to Canada from Ireland three decades ago.
"For me, not being from Canada originally, I've been embraced with this in my 30 years here and it means a lot of me now to see what these men gave for this great country. My wife is reading a book about it now and city-loads of young men went out there at the age of 16 on up and some of them didn't last more than weeks before they passed away. It was unbelievable. They wanted to fight for the cause and for peace and for their nation."
The last First World War veteran died in 2010 and Murphy says it's up the Canadians to preserve the memories of those who fought for our freedom.
"I think Canada is remembering, the young people re embracing it, which is good to see," he said. "I know today in Prince George there's not a huge crowd here but still, on Remembrance Day the past few years the numbers have been up. I think what the men who survived the war hoped to bring on is being fulfilled. The young people are embracing it."
Armand Denicola laid a wreath at Sunday's ceremony as tribute to his father, Anthony, who was sent overseas from Prince George for the war and was wounded in action at Vimy Ridge.
"My dad spoke very little of it," said Armand. "I could never get him to tell me anything. It was gone and forgotten about for him, out of his mind. He was wounded pretty bad and was awarded the Medal of Bravery."
Now approaching his 95th birthday, Denicola went to France several years ago to visit the impressive monument at Vimy Ridge and tour the site where his father fought. The battle scars of bomb craters and the trenches and tunnel openings to facilitate troop movement remain etched into the surface of the countryside and are visible to this day.
For Denicola, a Second World War veteran for the Canadian Scottish Regiment who landed at Juno Beach on D-Day in the Battle of Normandy and was awarded France's National Order of the Legion of Honour for his own bravery, the chance to visit the site of so many horrors of war his father witnessed proved overwhelming.
"I cried," said Armand, looking over to his son Neal. "I was just about to do it now, too."
