By Sarah Wallace

Students return from Vimy Ridge trip

Apr 23, 2012 | 9:25 AM

It’s a trip they won’t soon forget.

14 students from Carlton Comprehensive High School in Prince Albert recently returned from the 95th anniversary of Vimy Ridge in Europe.

Grade 11 and 12 history teacher Kelly Klassen said the students were just amazing throughout the trip, even in spite of the weather.

“The trip went really well. The kids had a pretty good experience I think, they were pretty happy. We saw a lot of great things and it got a bit emotional at times, it was a good experience,” Klassen said.

“[The day] started off ok, it was a little cloudy but we were excited. [The weather] was symbolic I guess, cause it’s probably how the day went on the actually Vimy Ridge experience for the soldiers, so it was learning for the kids.”

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Timothy Franc, a grade 12 student at Carlton, was one of the students who went on the trip.

“It was an experience because you know they went through that same thing. It was cool just for us to have a little part of what they went through. My teacher was saying they had no buses to go to after, they were just stuck in the trenches,” Franc said of the weather.

Klassen said the students took every chance they got to see cemeteries, ceremonies, monuments and memorials and got right into the history of what they were seeing.

“They were full participants in the experience,” Klassen said.

Each student was paired up with a soldier before they left and Klassen said students eagerly sought out their soldiers cemetery plots or if their soldier didn’t have a plot they tried to make a mark of remembrance.

“I was very lucky to actually know one of the soldiers I was honoring. His name is William Halcrow; he lives out by Birch Hills. But just being able to sit in the same building or just being able to talk to that same person who was willing and able to give up his live, for not only his country but for future generations, it’s just a great honor to have gone and represented him and going to the spots where he fought. It was just something else,” Franc said.

At one point Klassen said they were at a cemetery outside a small French town and held their own remembrance ceremony, along with a small group of students from Manitoba.

They read poems, students spoke about their soldiers and they even laid poppies.

“I got choked up, the kids were teary a little bit, and it made it special, less of a tour of Europe and more of something that’s more important than that,” said Klassen.

The students had taken with them a flag, which they pulled out at key moments to help them remember, and is now on display at the school.

The kids even took their own mementos, like poppies and flags, and left them at various places, like grave sites, along their trip.

swallace@panow.com