2025 Battlefield Study Tour

The Canadian Battlefields Foundation 2025 Study Tour explored Canada’s experience in Western Europe during the First and Second World Wars. We designed this two-week program for university students and emerging scholars to bring together battlefield study, historical interpretation, commemoration, and reflection across Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Germany.

We walked the ground where Canadian soldiers fought, lived, and died. We traced our military experience from the initial battles of the First World War through the liberation of the Netherlands and the invasion of Northern Germany during the Second World War. Our approach encouraged students to examine Canada’s military history and to consider how ideas of war, sacrifice, and identity developed over time.

Students engaged with landscapes, cemeteries, memorials, and in local communities. At Essex Farm Canadian War Cemetery, they stood where John McCrae served and reflected on how place can shape memory and meaning. At the Vimy Memorial, students considered how landscape and design contribute to national remembrance. They also took part in the Menin Gate Ceremony, alongside residents, witnessing and participating in how commemoration continues as a living community practice. At the Hochwald Forest, they moved through wooded terrain and cornfields while tracing the route of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division during a Tactical Exercise Without Troops.

We explored commemoration through visits to imperial and allied cemeteries and through engagement with communities. At the Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial, students examined how imperial service is remembered and how colonial histories shape commemoration. At Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, they considered how France honours its war dead and how national memory takes form through landscape and ritual. Our time in Welberg showed how community-based remembrance continues through shared practices and local stewardship.

Students also took part in individual acts of remembrance. They researched a specific Canadian soldier’s life honoured them through personal gestures such as sharing family apple cider, creating handmade tributes, and leaving meaningful objects or family artifacts at gravesites. These acts allowed students to see commemoration as an active and ongoing practice shaped by individual and collective responsibility.

We built time into the program for reflection and interpretation. Students chose how to reflect in a range of ways, including writing, sketching, audio recording, and discussion. Reflection helped them move beyond facts to consider meaning, perspective, and experience. When writing letters home from the perspective of a soldier, students practiced historical empathy by thinking through fear, uncertainty, and responsibility. They also examined cause and consequence by tracing how battlefield decisions shaped outcomes for combatants and civilians.

Students also took on leadership roles during tactical exercises and group discussions. Through these activities, they used their historical imagination to think differently about decision-making during combat. Visiting sites from the opening and closing phases of the First World War allowed students to confront the human cost of conflict. At St. Symphorien Military Cemetery, students reflected on lives lost at both the beginning and end of the war, including the final soldier killed in 1918. Walking through places such as the Givenchy battlefield, where farmers still uncover war junk, reinforced how the past impacts the present.

By spending time in the places where history unfolded, students gained deeper insight into Canada’s military past. Walking the ground, engaging with communities, and reflecting together helped them understand how war continues to shape the world today. The tour also benefited from an interdisciplinary team of facilitators who brought multiple perspectives to the learning experience. Together, these elements supported the Canadian Battlefields Foundation’s commitment to education, commemoration, and responsible stewardship of history, while encouraging students to carry these lessons forward.