Talk:Canadian National Vimy Memorial

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

France Portal
Canadian National Vimy Memorial is within the scope of WikiProject France, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to France on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please join the project and help with our open tasks.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the Project's quality scale.
(If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments, explaining the ratings and/or suggest improvements.)
MILHIST This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Canada Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Canada and related WikiProjects, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles on Canada-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project member page, to join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

Changed intro line, Vimy was the National War memorial for all the dead of WWI not just a memorial to the Battle of Vimy Ridge. wakemp 17:55, 4 January 2006.

Well it technically isn't in France as it's Canadian soil. It's surrounded by France, used to be part of France but is Canadian. - JVG 09:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

The UN is in New York, even though it is international territory. Seems like splitting hairs to me, especially as its political status is mentioned in the next sentences. But I defer. - Randwicked 13:10, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

The Vimy Memorial Site is Canadian owned but it is not Canadian territory in the same sense as an embassy. French laws still apply to the site, of which there are a specific set for conduct of the memorial site. For instance, the ban on dogs at the site is in fact a french law. --Labattblueboy 05:16, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, it is owned by Canada, but that is totally a different issue from it being under the sovereignty of Canada. I have added a fact tag to a statement that it is "Canadian territory" and will remove it unless a strong legal source is provided to back up this claim, which will not be forthcoming. Lexicon (talk) 18:38, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Working Statues

Added section saying that the working copies of the statues at Vimy are now on display in Canada. Burtonpe 16:10, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] trivia and the railway car

Although Hitler may have ordered the destruction of various memorials, is it not the case that these orders were not necessarily carried out? For example, wasn't the armistice railway car used again in WW2? 203.198.237.30 05:10, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Why should I bother responding to an anonymous user? In any event, who said the orders were carried out? Paris is still there, right? The article clearly says "ordered", nowhere does it indicate all those orders were carried out. And no, the original railway car is not there, it was destroyed in WW II - AFTER Hitler made them [France] sign the surrender to Germany in it, in a touch of deliberate historical irony.Michael Dorosh 06:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Mike(Michael is the name given above, please do not assume familiarity, especially in the absence of any self identification on your partMichael Dorosh 17:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)), I hope your first comment isn't an accurate reflection of your character. This kind of reaction is so over the top and against the very essence of WP that the decent thing would be to apologise. Leaving the ironic unpleasantness of your comment to one side, do I really need to point out that regardless of what actually happened, your earlier wording implied they were carried out: "While other monuments in France were ordered destroyed by Hitler (ranging from the rail car in which the Armistice had been signed in 1918 to the entire city of Paris)...". Mentioning the railway car (destroyed) and Paris (obviously not destroyed) together would be potentially confusing to some readers. So yes, obviously not all orders were carried out and I will reinstate mention of the railway car. We could also reinstate Paris but only if we removed any possibility of confusion by including a bit on how area commanders did not follow through. 203.198.237.30 11:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
    • The railway car was not destroyed by Hitler himself, but was transported to a museum in Germany, where it was promptly destroyed by an American or British bomb in the later years of the war. See Shirer. User:Gerolsteiner 16:10, 23 April 2006

Getting back to the comment, The information provided by the guides at the Memorial was that Hitler specifically ordered that WWI memorials not be touched. So I believe the posted information to be incorrect and should be removed. My understanding, There were only 2 WWI memorials destoryed between 1940-1944 one was an Austrailian that had the German eagle getting stomped on by a solider - in a fashion common in propoganda posters, and another memorial that refered to the Germans as "barbarians". This Triva might be interesting for the Talk section but should be removed from the main article. Wakemp 15:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the "anonymous" user's edit completely changed the nature of the comments. It was not meant to imply that Vimy was ever in danger of being destroyed - it clearly wasn't. I did want to introduce the notion that while Hitler had no qualms about destroying culturally significant landmarks (he did order Paris burned, and he did destroy the railcar, which did not need such a lengthy rewording) he both visited Vimy and had respect for the soldiers that fought there - since he considered himself one of them. I'm not happy with the rewording by "anonymous" and will change the wording to reflect Wakemp's comments.Michael Dorosh 17:40, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  • MD, great maturity and integrity in your characterisations. My edits were based entirely on your material. The necessary elaborations we now have resulted from that. Nice way to conduct the genuine synthesis which we all usually attempt to strive for here. 203.198.237.30 05:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Added in the pic of Hitler at the Memorial....not sure about copyright status of this pic, can anyone help with this? Burtonpe 14:43, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
It's fair dinkum, mate, but I can't edit the licensing. Reupload it and identify it as public domain.Michael Dorosh 15:11, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
I'll take care of it. – ugen64 05:02, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Just for future reference, the image isn't old enough to be public domain (specifically, the creator can't have died more than 70 years ago as per German copyright law because the picture's not that old). But it is fair use so I have tagged it that way. (I could have sworn there was a specific Nazi Germany copyright tag...) – ugen64 05:10, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] the area

how big is the park? Jackzhp 18:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] pre-restoration photo

I added three more photos, perhaps too many, but was going to replace the pre-restoration photo thinking it should be clearly labelled pre-restoration if it were left, which would be too awkward. I thought better of replacing it though and left it since it is a useful shot. But perhaps it should go on the grounds that the Memorial does not look that run down anymore.Bdell555 19:53, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Images

It's a good probem to have, but the article contained too many images. Too many photos had been crammed into the article, given the relatively short size of the article. This isn't necessarily a bad thing -- not too long ago, we didn't have any real images of the memorial. However, the layout looked terrible. What I have done is I left the better images in the article, taken all the images and placed them in a Commons category, and then linked the Commons category in the article. Therefore, the article looks better, and the full selection of images remains available to the reader through the Commons.--Skeezix1000 (talk) 16:57, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reorganization & Improvement

I have begun a significant edit & improvement of the information in this article. Is there anything in particular that is being requested?Labattblueboy (talk) 21:10, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cemeteries

I have created a page for each of the cemeteries on the site. Picture contributions would be appreciated.Labattblueboy (talk) 21:59, 16 January 2008 (UTC)