With Remembrance Day just around the corner, École Riverside School students are taking part in an international commemoration of Canada's First World War veterans.
"Canada 1914-1918 Ypres" is the name of a vigil taking place in more than 150 schools from across Canada, and one in Switzerland. All these schools, as well as the site of the original vigil at Ypres Salient in Belgium, are simultaneously displaying the names of all 68,000 Canadians - soldiers, sailors, airmen, doctors, nurses, and merchant seamen, including 67 women - who died in the First World War.
On Nov. 4, senior, École Riverside students were able to view a live stream of ceremonies from Ypres, where the stone of the Menin Gate is engraved with the names of 6,940 Canadians whose bodies were found either unidentifiable or not at all.
"We are very fortunate to be able to participate in such a wonderful project to honour those men and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice for us and our country," said Rob Fisher, principal of Riverside. The vigil is also on display at R.D. Parker Collegiate, giving Thompson two out of the 10 Manitoban schools participating in the event.
The vigil is on display in the École Riverside school library each day from 10:15 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. - and available live to the whole world on the Internet. Some Riverside students have decorated the area around the screen with handmade poppies.
Fisher, who first found out about the vigil while listening to the radio and then looked to get École Riverside involved, says that the vigil provides great opportunities to teach students in older grades about what the First World War was and why Remembrance Day is significant. He has asked students to treat the area around the vigil with the utmost respect, as if it were a graveyard.
The vigil began on Nov. 4, and will wrap up on Nov. 10, ending with the name of the final soldier -John Babcock, Canada's last surviving veteran of the First World War, who died in February. All other names were selected at random. Each name appeared on the vigil exactly one time, starting at the top of the screen and working downwards, appearing for a total duration of 25 seconds.
Every 15 minutes, the flow of names pauses and is replaced with an image of one of the 3,400 cemeteries in Belgium and France where Canadians were buried after the war.
Since the First World War, Ypres has become known as the "City of Peace." Every three years, the city awards the International Peace Prize to an individual who has distinguished themselves in this area.
During the war, the city of Ypres, known for its cloth manufacturing base, was an important strategic point, as it was one of the key points for access to the ports of the French Channel. Beginning Nov. 22, 1914, the city was destroyed by German forces. The Ypres heights were recaptured by Canadian soldiers in June 1916, and Ypres is now best known for its role in the war, as the home of the historic Flanders Fields.
