Vimy Pilgrimage Award Blog – 2 April 2018

Our 2018 Vimy Pilgrimage Award recipients have left Canada for a week-long immersive educational program in Belgium and France to study Canada’s First World War effort. Follow along as they blog about their experience! (Please note: participants will blog in their mother tongue.)  Today’s first blogs come from our chaperones.

—

Everyone made it to Montreal! Of all the logistics involved in the VPA, this is the one I was the most nervous about. With it being early April and having people fly in from across the country, the possibility of an infamous spring snow storm always lingered in my mind. Now that that is no longer a possibility, I’m really looking forward to getting the program started. I’ve always loved active learning and getting students outside the classroom as much as possible, and the VPA is an incredible example of that. The opportunity to visit the various sites and have them tell the story of the First World War is a great opportunity for not only the students, but also us chaperones.

-Sean Graham

I have arrived safely in Brussels and am looking forward to meeting the students and my fellow chaperones! We have a busy and exciting week ahead of us, and I can’t wait to start sharing critical thinking skills with this year’s VPA recipients. Being the only non-Canadian this year, I am also hoping to learn a bit more about Canadian culture from our students. It’s going to be a lovely and educational programme, and we’ll go over different historical sources such as sites, material culture and literature, and hopefully the students will be equipped to pass the knowledge they gain forward onto their fellow Canadians.

-Julia Ribeiro Thomaz

After much anticipation, we are finally all together. Everyone has arrived at the airport and I can’t express enough how excited I am to embark on this journey with such a fantastic group of students and chaperones. This is my first year on the VPA program and I’m really looking forward to the wonderful experience we will all share.

-Lindsay Fraser-Noel

The day is finally here! The students and chaperones all met up at the airport in Montreal and are heading overseas for the Vimy Pilgrimage Award program. We have a full itinerary that begins as soon as we arrive in Ypres in order to make the most of our time in Europe – starting with the In Flanders Fields museum in the Cloth Hall. I look forward to getting to know the students and sharing such an incredible experience on the Canadian battlefields in France and Belgium!

-Sara Karn

I am so thrilled to be meeting everyone and hearing about what has brought them on this amazing journey to Vimy. I know that we have come from all across Canada with very different stories to share and I look forward to hearing about each and every single one. It maybe be a long day for some of us but I believe it will be a great day and a great start to the experience of a life time.

-Christopher Kinsella займы на карту