HISTORY in Canada Slates Doc Celebrating WWI Military Victory

HISTORY in Canada has scheduled the national broadcast premiere of the feature documentary Searching for Vimy’s Lost Soldiers for April 9, marking the 100-year anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge, which is considered the country’s most famous military victory.

During World War I, 3,600 Canadians were killed in the assault on Vimy Ridge from April 9 to 12, 1917, resulting in a mass grave that vanished after the war. The documentary, which will air on Sunday, April 9, at 9 p.m., commemorates the hard-fought battle. Produced by Breakthrough Entertainment in association with Corus Entertainment, Searching for Vimy’s Lost Soldiers takes viewers along as historian Norm Christie sets out to locate and recover the graveyard, known in 1917 as CA40. The special shows how over the past three years, Christie has pushed forward on the project to locate the open graveyard where the battle was fought in order to recover the remains of Canadian soldiers who lost their lives there.

“This is a great mystery story for the ages, one that has the raw emotional power to move us today,” said Peter Williamson, partner and executive producer at Breakthrough Entertainment. “The HISTORY Channel premiere will enable all Canadians to discover how our nation’s military participation continues to shape our current identity.”

“As Brigadier-General Alexander Ross famously said of the battle, in those few minutes he ‘witnessed the birth of a nation,’” added Christie, who hosts and serves as executive producer on the documentary. “For Canada, the battle of Vimy Ridge was a great victory; for the families of the 3,600 soldiers killed there, it was a tragedy.”