Bill Cunningham, Trochu Museum president, and Trochu veterans Margaret Stankevich, Jack Christie, Jim Christie, and Bruce Campbell, president of Legion Branch 98, Trochu, at the Trochu Museum’s presentation of From Vimy to Juno, Thurs. June 21. ECA Review/D. Nadeau
It was not hard to imagine myself on the map’s twisty line between Vimy and Juno Beach.
Maybe as a soldier, a prisoner, or a frightened refugee.
The large map, a centerpiece panel at the Trochu and District Museum’s ‘From Vimy to Juno’ display, showed Juno to the left, Dieppe near the middle, and Vimy to the far right. Is that me on the twisty road, joining the war victims?
No, I’m safe and comfortable in Trochu, Ab. sipping tea, nibbling goodies and talking to WWII vets and trying, unsuccessfully, to think what I would have done had I been them in either of the great wars.
For long-time Trochu museum president, Bill Cunningham, Thurs. June 21, was quite an evening—a museum full of curious guests, Ilona Noble getting her exercise on the century-old Kimball pump organ with O Canada, a comfortable handful of veterans, and a bevy of WWII songs by Pleasant Company, a Trochu/Three Hills vocal group.
From Vimy to Juno—Canada in France 1914–1945, sponsored by the Vimy Foundation and the Juno Beach Centre, is in Trochu until July 6 after which it makes its way this summer to Sundre, Rocky Mountain House, Ponoka and Millet.
The Vimy to Juno display panels cover the Vimy Memorial, a WWII Canadian involvement timeline, a snapshot of Canada during the second war (population, enlistments, casualties), and the telling statement that Canadian history was made at Vimy Ridge, Juno Beach, and many places in between: “Through two world wars, hundreds of thousands of Canadians fought in France, helping shape our national identity.”
One display panel quotes Lt. Col. C.C. Owen, a participant at the July 1936 Vimy Memorial unveiling as saying, “Returning to France gives us the feeling we are treading on sacred ground as we think of the thousands who sleep here.”
