Canada – Special Vimy Pilgrimage Passport 1936

I stumbled over this unusual Canadian passport during research, which I had never heard of before, but the story behind this special passport is of national significance. The Canadian National Vimy Memorial is a place for all Canadians who served their country in battle during W.W.I. 60,000 Canadians were killed. Over 11,000 of those killed died in France, but they have no known grave. The Canadian National Vimy Memorial bears the inscribed names of 11,168 missing Canadians, killed in action in France but whose remains have not been found or identified. Special passport issued by Canada for the 1936 Vimy pilgrimage

Dedication Ceremony, July 1936

The Government of Canada issued around 6000 free-of-charge Special Vimy Passports. These passports were provided for people who wanted to make the pilgrimage to France for the unveiling ceremony of the Vimy Memorial and visits to other sites of Canadian sacrifice.

Over 6,000 pilgrims set sail for France on five ocean-going steamships, leaving the port of Montreal in Canada on Jul 16, 1936. The five ships were the S.S. Montrose, S.S. Montcalm, S.S. Antonia, S.S. Ascania, and S.S. Duchess of Atholl.

During the Pilgrimage visit, the S.S. Montrose also carried 300 wreaths to be laid at Canadian sites on the 1914-1918 Western Front battlefields. Over 1,000 Canadians also traveled from England.

 

The date of the dedication and unveiling ceremony was Jul 26, 1936. There was a massive crowd of approximately 100,000 people present at the ceremony. Many thousands of them were of Canadian, British and French ex-Servicemen. About 8,000 Canadian Veterans had traveled there from Canada.

There were family members of the surviving Veterans and their comrades who had been killed, widows and mothers, dignitaries, and royalty. There were also 50 children from the five French communes who had donated the land as a gift to Canada and another 200 children from Arras.

King Edward VIII unveiled the memorial as King of Canada. As Prince of Wales before he was crowned king, Edward had been on the Staff of the Canadian Corps in France during the war. The President of France, Monsieur Albert Lebrun, participated in the official unveiling. During the ceremony, King Edward pulled a cord to release the Union Flag (Union Jack), which covered the statue of “Mother Canada” on the northern wall of the memorial.

In 1996, the Vimy Memorial and the battlefield site surrounding it were established as a National Historic Site of Canada. There are over 950 National Historic Sites of Canada. All but two of the sites are located in Canada. The two sites located outside Canada are the Canadian National Vimy Memorial and the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial on the Somme battlefield. Veteran Affairs Canada maintains the site.

Learn more about this historical site…

This passport has the number 673 (of about 6000), so quite a very early issue, and the document condition is just excellent. On May 2, 1936, the passport was issued in Ottawa to Police Constable Charley Bumstead Esq. The passport expired on Aug 1, 1937. Page nine shows the only stamp in the passport = Quebec Immigration, Sep 25, 1936.

How many of these special passports survived?

Recently, readers/collectors sent me more information and I can now update the statistics on “available” documents. Currently, I’m aware of merely EIGHT instances. Four are held by Canadian collectors, two resides within a Canadian archives/museums, and two within my own collection. Government records indicate approximately 6000 passports were issued, yet nearly nine decades later, it’s reasonable to assume only a tiny fraction remain existing.

As I hold now two Vimy Pilgrimage passports, I can let go one – if someone is interested!

Special passport issued by Canada for the 1936 Vimy pilgrimage

 

Tom Topol | Passport History Expert & Author.
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