General Chat

This 4 acre park was opened last Friday near the Vimy Memorial, as a quiet contemplative site,

The centrepiece is a woodland consisting of 100 oak saplings, descendants from one of the giant oaks that were once so common in this area of France until WW1 destroyed everything.

Vimy Ridge 9-12 April 1917 was where thousands of Canadians were killed and thousands more wounded , and it was the start of Canada becoming a nation in its own right.

The acorns were collected by a Canadian soldier sent out to look for wounded after the battle when he stumbled across a partly buried destroyed oak tree that still had acorns. He collected some, put them in a container and sent them back to his farming family in Ontario.

After the war, he planted the acorns on the family farm and they eventually grew into giant trees. There are still 10 trees surviving from the original acorns, and a non-profit group called Vimy Oaks Legacy has been growing trees from both cuttings and acorns, then sending the saplings across Canada to be planted as living memorials.

The 100 trees at the Centennial Park at Vimy were supplied by this group. They are only about 6' tall at the moment, they will begin producing acorns in about 40 years, and reach full maturity between 80 and 120 years.

What a memorial!!


I am particularly proud to learn that the province in which I live provided a large amount of the $1.3 million (ca £75,500) or so that was needed to clear the land of unexploded shells, bombs, etc.