History about to come alive for some local cadets

A group of local cadets and staff of Royal Canadian Sea Cadet Corps Brilliant are on their way to Vimy Ridge.

They left North Bay this morning (Thursday) for the Canada and the World Wars tour.

Executive Officer Sub Lt. Lorie Hall says it’s a really great opportunity for their Corps to learn what happened and walk in the footsteps of how our country was formed.

“To actually have the opportunity to walk on the battlefields, to see Vimy Ridge isn’t very big, people thinks it’s a huge battleground, it’s not very big and some of our cadets who are travelling are the same age as some of the soldiers that fought and died in this war,” she says.

That hits home for Chief Petty Officer Second Class Noah Turcotte, who is 17.

“It makes the moment more solemn because on the Vimy Memorial there’s all the names of the fallen and knowing that some of them may have been my age, I can’t imagine what that would’ve been like,” he says.

As a French-Canadian, Turcotte also says he’s looking forward to re-tracing his family roots to Europe.

The nine day trip includes tours in Germany, the Netherlands and France.

Along with Vimy Ridge and Juno Beach, the cadets will visit the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, a concentration camp, Canadian War Cemeteries, the Anne Frank House and take a guided tour of Paris too.