1916 Canada

Canada lost almost 65,000 lives during the First World War. A quarter of all the victims that perished outside of Canada did so in Belgium. During the first two years of the war, from August 1914 to August 1916, four out of five of the Canadians that fell lost their lives between Ypres and the French border.

The First Canadian Contingent was dispatched to Ypres with great haste and was immediately embroiled in the bloody Second Battle of Ypres. A few months later, the Canadian Corps was formed on the same front in Flanders and was once again put to the test without delay.

Since the Canadian Corps earned its fame later on in the war on the battlefields in France, Canada’s national commemoration has mainly focused on Vimy and the Somme. Beaumont-Hamel was also included in 1949, when Newfoundland & Labrador were integrated in the Canadian nation. The symbols of the older Canadian battlefields, Flanders and Ypres, were thus relegated to second place in the Canadian as well as the Belgian collective memory.

On the occasion of the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Mount Sorrel and Hill 62 (2 to 13 June 1916), the first major battle involving the Canadian Corps, this exhibition also examines how Canada in Flanders - as well as Flanders in Canada - lives on in many ways a hundred years later.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication.