Victory at Vimy: Canada Comes of Age, April 9–12, 1917.

Tim Cook is the transport archivist at the Government Archives and
Records Disposition Division, National Archives of Canada, and the
author of No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the
First World War.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917 has become an iconic event for Canadians. While it was an undisputed tactical victory, it did little to change the course of the Great War. But Vimy was important to the Canadian Corps, Canada’s land army of four divisions, which attacked together for the first time at the battle, and captured the German fortress in occupied Northern France. While Canadians took pride in the success of the corps on the Western Front, over time Vimy came to signify Canada’s coming of age. Historians and mythmakers have been attracted to the subject for years, and it is a daunting task to write about such a quintessential event, especially with the ever-present shadow of Pierre Berton’s much beloved epic, Vimy (1986).

Historian Ted Barris has tackled the battle anew. One wonders if there is anything left to say about Vimy, and Victory at Vimy reveals there is not, at least in so far as Barris offers in this book. Barris provides no new interpretations of the battle, has conducted no deep research into archives other than to mine a few unpublished soldiers’ memoirs and letters, and generally recycles many of the stories that are familiar to any historian who has read one of the dozens of books already devoted to the battle. Barris misses the opportunity to tell us why Vimy remains an important signpost for Canadians, and why we continue to embrace its symbol for posters, coins, and other commemorative events. But perhaps this was not Barris’s goal. His history is an engaging story of Canadians at war, and he writes with much skill in explaining the battle through the eyes of the soldiers at the front. That will be enough for many readers. Each generation of Canadians encounters its own history, and Barris has done a service for this one, nearly 20 years after Berton. While there remains a hungry market for Vimy histories, this is a work that will fade from memory long before the myth of Vimy.