By So if you are following all of the blogs so far you might have noticed many of the students writing about an object such as a church, a piece of art, or an event. They are writing in such a way that you know that they are passionate and that when they came to their place or object that it moved them in a way that knowing its history and meaning could only bring. So that is the first part of my title, knowledge equals a more passionate experience and not just for the person doing the presentation but also for the person listening, because it gives me, personally, a personal understanding of things that I just didn’t know. But the second part of my title is more to do with my presentation. I did my material culture project on the WWI battle of Vimy Ridge in France. We went there and with seeing it and having a guided tour my perspectives really changed. As a high school student i learned about the battle and thought that it was the best thing ever; that in the victory, done mostly by Canadians, the country was unified and that no one else could have done it. Ergo, Canadians are awesome. But doing the research and hearing it done by another person passionate about the same subject made me realize how we romanticize. We take the allies and turn them into the hero and when we see the numbers of dead on the allied side we are sad and full of pride for the lives lost and then we look at the Germans and all that they did as a super villain. But can anybody tell me why WWI started and if the Germans were any worse than the allies, why we see victories of killing more of the bad guys as a good thing? What I have been learning is that Vimy has been, for me, a battle that has made war look to good. There were things done here that helped to save lives on the Allied side, but thousands of Germans died too. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we need to celebrate the lives lost and not necessary the lives that we took. The victory of Vimy Ridge was a small piece in Canada’s history but not what brought us together. You’re probably thinking, wow this girl is a pacifist and hates supporting war and such, but please don’t read into this too much. For me to write that I am looking at this battle in a new light is a good thing because I no longer only see the good in war, the good done by Canadians, the typical “bad guys” as monsters and I don’t only celebrate the victories instead of the lives lost on both sides. Instead, my experiences are making me, and hopefully more people, aware of the damaging effects that this war had on the world.
Lois