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The Canadian National Vimy Memorial

Notice to Visitors

To ensure public safety during annual maintenance, access to the Vimy Monument will be restricted on the following dates:

Monday, July 26 to Friday, July 30, 2010
No public access to the Monument
Saturday, July 31 to Saturday, August 7, 2010
Limited public access with restrictions in some areas

Visitors are requested to follow posted instructions and to respect all barricades.

All other facilities and services (tunnels, visitors centre, cemeteries) will remain open as usual. For additional information, please speak with a Canadian guide at the Visitor Centre or call the Administrative Office at 03.21.50.68.68.

The Government of Canada is committed to ensuring that all visitors to the Canadian National Vimy Memorial have a safe and memorable experience.

We sincerely regret any inconvenience these restrictions may cause.

Canada's most impressive tribute overseas to those Canadians who fought and gave their lives in the First World War is the majestic and inspiring Canadian National Vimy Memorial which overlooks the Douai Plain from the highest point of Vimy Ridge, about ten kilometres north of Arras. The Memorial does more than mark the site of the engagement that Canadians were to remember with more pride than any other operation of the First World War. It stands as a tribute to all who served their country in battle in that four-year struggle and particularly to those who gave their lives. At the base of the Memorial, these words appear in French and in English:

To the valour of their
Countrymen in the Great War
And in memory of their sixty
Thousand dead this monument
Is raised by the people of Canada
-Inscription on monument

Carved on the walls of the monument are the names of 11,285 Canadian soldiers who were killed in France and whose final resting place was then unknown. Standing on the monument’s wide stone terrace overlooking the broad fields and rolling hills of Northern France, one can see other places where Canadians fought and died. More than 7,000 are buried in 30 war cemeteries within a 20-kilometre radius of the Vimy Memorial. Altogether, more than 66,000 Canadian service personnel died in the First World War.

Designed by Canadian sculptor and architect Walter Seymour Allward, the monument took eleven years to build. It rests on a bed of 11,000 tonnes of concrete, reinforced with hundreds of tonnes of steel. The towering pylons and sculptured figures contain almost 6,000 tonnes of limestone brought to the site from an abandoned Roman quarry on the Adriatic Sea (in present day Croatia). The figures were carved where they now stand from huge blocks of this stone. A cloaked figure stands at the front, or east side, of the monument overlooking the Douai Plain. It was carved from a single, 30-tonne block and is the largest piece in the monument. This sorrowing fi gure of a woman represents Canada—a young nation mourning her dead. Below is a tomb, draped in laurel branches and bearing a helmet and sword.

As an important cultural resource located on a significant historic site, the restoration of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial raised serious conservation issues and presented unique technical challenges. The history of the monument’s construction and the vision of its creator guided the restoration team in carrying out the work with particular care and craftsmanship. Construction and restoration of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial took place over a two-year period and was completed in 2007. The work included dismantling and rebuilding stone structures in the monument’s platform and vertical walls, replacing and re-engraving damaged stone, repointing the two massive pylons, cleaning the twenty statues that adorn the monument, and improving the drainage and lighting systems.

For more information about the restoration project, please visit Canadian Battlefield Memorials Restoration Project.

Vimy Ridge National Historic Site of Canada
62580 VIMY, FRANCE
03 21 50 68 68
Fax: 03 21 58 58 34
E-mail: Vimy.Memorial@vac-acc.gc.ca