The cost of victory was terrible, with some 66,000 Canadians killed and another 172,000 suffering physical wounds. Led by Canadian-born Sir Arthur Currie from mid-1917, the Corps was the instrument of Canada’s contribution to victory and a symbol that a new country was emerging from the horror of war. It was a total war that thrust Canada on to the world stage, and where its primary fighting force, the Canadian Corps, delivered victories at Vimy, Hill 70, Passchendaele, Amiens, Arras, Cambrai, and Mons. That Armageddon of destruction, where industrialized fighting from 1914 to 1918 caused over nine million soldiers’ deaths in battle, more than 21 million more wounded, and destroyed empires, continues to cast a long shadow.įor Canada, a country of not yet eight million, more than 620,000 men served in uniform, alongside 3,000 nurses. The poppy emerged as a symbol from the killing fields of the Western Front during the First World War. George Metcalf Archival Collection / Canadian War Museum

A Canadian soldier tends to the makeshift grave of a comrade killed near Vimy Ridge in 1917.

Third war for armageddon