With Remembrance Day right around the corner, Yorkton Regional High School teachers Perry Ostapowich and Steve Variyan are reminiscing about their travels to the WW II Battlefields of northern France. For 10 days in August, 27 Canadian history teachers from across the country, including Ostapowich and Variyan, explored the Normandy countryside to get insight into this defining chapter in Canadian history.
The teachers had been selected by the Juno Beach Centre Association to participate in the intensive study tour, designed to increase teacher subject knowledge, promote and revitalize remembrance, and ultimately enhance student learning. Variyan and Ostapowich gained firsthand knowledge of Canada's participation in the First and Second World Wars. Trip highlights included visits to Canadian battlefields at Vimy Ridge, Beaumont-Hamel, Dieppe, the D-Day landing beaches including the Juno Beach sector, Falaise Gap, and other battle locations.
"It was a professional development opportunity of a lifetime!" said Variyan. "To be right there, where it really happened, will only enrich my teaching of the wars. For me, it reinforced the importance of remembering these very personal sacrifices, which is an experience I want to pass on to my students."
The journey began at Beaumont-Hamel where, in 1916, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 814 Dominion of Newfoundland soldiers were wiped out in minutes in a disastrous battle with German forces. From there, the group travelled a short distance to Canada's "Coming of Age" battlefield, Vimy Ridge. For the remainder of the tour, the group was immersed in World War II battlefields, beaches, and cemeteries of the Normandy Campaign.
A sad chapter in Canadian military history, the 1942 Battle of Dieppe was a moving testimony to the ill-fated beach assault on the French resort town. "To stand where the cliff-top German gun emplacements still watch over the pebble beach makes me shake my head at the folly of the mission," said Variyan. "Nevertheless, Canada's first European contribution of World War II cannot be discounted as a lot was learned from this battle."
"For me, a highlight of the tour was visiting the Juno Beach Centre and walking the beaches where Canadians so willingly gave their lives in the cause of freedom," said Ostapowich. D-Day was the largest amphibious invasion in the history of the world. This was to be the beginning of the end of the war. Of the five Normandy beaches attacked on D-Day, Juno was where 14,000 Canadian soldiers stormed ashore and established a critical beachhead, paving the way for thousands more to continue on to Germany.
"Truly understanding the magnitude of the sacrifice and the experiences our servicemen and women went through can only be accomplished by being there," says Ostapowich. He gets emotional when he recalls one of the special personal moments of the trip. "A group of French seniors from the village of Mesnil Patrie hosted our group to a lunch in their community hall. The occasion was to honour the liberation by Canadian soldiers of their village and to thank the teachers for keeping the memories alive. The memories they shared and the gratitude they showed us as Canadians was truly humbling."
The Yorkton Regional teachers will bring these experiences and resources to others. They hope to create a type of memory project where students and teachers can visit an on-line resource with information, images and teaching ideas for students and teachers alike. Ostapowich noted that with most veterans of these conflicts gone, the living history is no longer with us. He went on to explain that anyone can Google images of the World Wars but how can these resources be used in an educational way to build an understanding of the sacrifices and values that came out of these conflicts is very important.
