Vigil honouring Canada’s First World War dead planned for Ypres

Published Friday, Oct. 29, 2010 7:15PM EDTLast updated Friday, Oct. 29, 2010 7:19PM EDT0 comments

The historic city of Ypres will be the site of a seven-day vigil beginning Nov. 4 to remember the 68,000 Canadians killed in the First World War.

The names of the war dead will be projected in sequence, one by one, in the centre of the city opposite the Cloth Hall, the location of the In Flanders Fields war museum. Each name will appear for 25 seconds between sunset and sunrise.

“We'll be projecting through an open window of the museum and across a street onto the side of an old building above the Belgian war memorial,” said Ottawa-based lighting designer Martin Conboy, co-creator of the project along with Canadian actor R.H. Thomson.

“You won't even see where the beam of light is coming from, and so the images of these names will just emerge from the stone as if they were inside the stone. ... It's quite magical and extremely evocative.”

The vigil, with funding from Veterans Affairs Canada, will be streamed live to the website www.1914-1918.ca, ending early on Nov. 11. It will also occur simultaneously at over 150 schools across Canada and at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

The names of the dead include those killed in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, the Canadian merchant navy and the Canadian Army Medical Corps.

In 2008 Mr. Thomson and Mr. Conboy developed a similar vigil with names projected at the National War Memorial in Ottawa and in cities in Canada and the U.K.

Canadians fought in the area surrounding Ypres during the First World War. Thousands of Canadian graves are located in the region.

View the original article here