Vimy, Vidi, Vici

It's ninety years on from the storming and taking of Vimy Ridge. You know the story; we all do. Young troops, fresh from the farms of the Canadian colonies, are sent into a firefight, against heavy opposition with a critical task to do. Freedom itself is at stake. The Canucks are tough, terrifying, oddly eager for battle. They sustain terrible losses, but succeed in dislodging the Huns from a crucial hillside. It's a turning point in the war; it's a celebrated victory for the Allies; it's the maturing of a fledgling nation... That's what all the stories say. And today, all we've got left are the stories, as the last of the old soldiers is long gone now.


Yesterday I saw this insignia on a tilting gravestone in a ramshackle graveyard in the village of Grafton, Ontario. This isn't a soldier's grave, but it dates from about the time of the First World War. It's the grave of someone only a little bit beyond living memory, just like the graves at Vimy Ridge. And like the graves on Vimy Ridge, it's a kind of coded relic; a message, of sorts, from another, earlier Canada.

I wondered idly when I looked at this grave, what the handshake was supposed to mean? I wasn't thinking of Vimy Ridge; I was just curious about the symbol. Is one hand the Lord, reaching to welcome a new saved soul into the fold? Or is it a loved one, clasping hands with the departed forever in memory? Or maybe... is one hand meant to be mine?

There's something about a handshake; the old-fashioned kind, anyway. It's not just a way of greeting someone; it's also how you take his measure. And I wonder if that's what the maker of this lonesome headstone had in mind, all those years ago. Am I, a wanderer from an unlikely future, meant to measure myself against the dearly departed lying here?

And if so... then what about the ones at Vimy Ridge? How do you measure yourself when the scales are so completely different? Thousands of soldiers who paid with their lives: did they really exchange it all for... my freedom? It sounds almost quaint. It's impossibly old-fashioned, isn't it? Imagine trying to convey to a Vimy Ridge soldier what freedom is, what Canada has become, what the world is like today. I don't know whether to shudder, or shout in celebration when I think of it.

I can't help but wonder what my distant, fallen brother would make of me. There's really no telling, is there? I can't judge myself on his terms, I guess, and I don't think I'd want to judge him on mine, either. That was a long time ago. A lot of things have changed. All I know is, I'd look him square in the eye, I'd grip his hand firmly and sincerely, and I'd tell him I'm grateful. What more could I say?