Confederation Square became silent around 11 a.m. as Anishinaabe elder and Ottawa\u0027s poet laureate Albert Dumont opened the celebrations with a prayer
The crowd rose as Dumont and his granddaughter proceeded to smudge the audience of government and military dignitaries with burning sage.
“Many of them were young men in their late teens and early twenties, united in their fight for justice, peace, and freedom,” Trudeau said on Saturday. About 100,000 Canadian soldiers attacked the Germans from the morning of April 9 to April 12, 1917, and succeeded in capturing the ridge. “The battle, indeed, the entire war is a story of unity and collaboration of Canadian ingenuity, bravery and sacrifice,” Simon said.
Anand told the assembled crowd the battle marked the moment Canada stepped out and truly became a nation by contributing to one of the most significant Allied victories.The Germans transformed Vimy Ridge into a heavily-fortified system of tunnels and trenches in 1914, defended with an arsenal of machine guns and artillery pieces. After three years of unsuccessful assaults, hundreds of thousands of British and French troops had died and failed to capture Vimy Ridge.
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