This year will mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, the perfect opportunity for a group of students from Sacred Heart High School to tour Europe to learn about Canada's military history and better connect with the past.
Students Erica Baker and Shelby Novak both went on the trip, and spoke to The News Review about their experience.
The trip began in Amsterdam with the Anne Frank House and the Jewish Historic Museum. From there they went to Belgium, visiting cemeteries and the Flanders Field museum in Ieper, before moving on to Passchendaele and Vimy Ridge, and visiting Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery. The trip then continued to Juno Beach and Omaha Beach, before wrapping up in Paris.
Forty students went on the trip, selected based on an essay written about why they should go, explains Novak, with students fundraising in order to go.
Baker says that the trip was overwhelming, and it helped the students better understand what happened in the two world wars, and appreciate the sacrifices made by people before them.
"You hear it in school, you hear about everything that happened in school but you don't really understand it until you're there, and you're experiencing the weather conditions because they were the same, and you're feeling it. It's an experience that's overwhelming and emotionally draining," Novak says.
"Juno beach was overwhelming. When you got on the beach, and it was windy and raining like it was that day... Lots of girls would just break down and cry, they felt the soldiers with them," Baker adds.
At one of the cemeteries, each student placed a flag on a soldier's grave, and the students say it helped them appreciate what families went through at the time.
"My soldier was 21, and my brother is 21, so it's weird to think that he would have been there, and he could have been in one of those cemeteries," Novak says.
The trip also helped the class realize how privileged they are, Novak says, because of when the group was delayed trying to find the grave of a classmate's grandfather. She notes some people were getting impatient, but she realized what people went through decades earlier.
"We couldn't wait 40 minutes for supper, but they didn't know when they were going to get their next meal, they didn't know when they were going to go home. By the end of 10 days, we were all ready to come home to our families, but they didn't know when they were going to go home, so you have so much more respect and gratitude for them," Novak says.
Both students say that going on the trip makes them proud to be Canadian, and Baker says that they were lucky to go on the 70th anniversary of the D-day landings.
The students also encourage others to go on a similar trip, and say they want to return in the future and go at their own pace. Baker says that it was a packed itinerary, and she says she hopes to have the opportunity to move at a slower pace.
The trip was not only educational, but gave the students a better appreciation for what happened in the two World Wars, and Baker and Novak says that their appreciation and respect for the veterans has grown exponentially.
"I feel like this next Remembrance Day will be very emotional, because you know the places that they're talking about, you've seen them," Baker says.
