Our final stop was at Vimy Ridge to see the Canadian Memorial. This huge edifice rises high in the sky and it seemed a fitting way to honour the 60,000 Canadians who gave their lives in the war.
We have all come to appreciate some of the need that nations had after the war to build memorials that would somehow reflect the enormity of human suffering and sacrifice that the war entailed. In the ordered, pristine rows of graves, the well kept lawns and beautiful flower beds, in the grand arches of Thiepval and The Menin Gate, in the hundreds of thousands of names of the missing inscribed in the vast walls at various cemeteries we have visited, and in the carefully guarded fields of poppies, filled with craters and shrapnel- we have witnessed humanities attempt to justify, explain and come to terms with, the inhumanity of war.
But ultimately, we have recognised this week that there are no explanations, no justifications, no easy answers. Out of the chaos and atrocities of war, these three remain- faith, hope and love.
And the greatest of these is love
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