RRHS students travel to Europe over break

By Ken Johnston
Editor

Thirteen students from Rainy River High School spent their spring break visiting historic sites in Europe.
Originally planned as a spinoff to the current WW II history features appearing on the Record’s website (www.RainyRiverRecord.com), the teacher planning the trip, Laura Armistead, could not go as her husband recently had surgery. So teachers Cora Chojko-Bolec and Dan Mack stepped in and chaperoned the trip.
They left Winnipeg for London, England on March 8th. Despite a storm that day they still made it to London in fairly good time.
The first day, they did a walking tour seeing the Thames River, Trafalgar Square, National Art Gallery, Piccadilly Circus, Soho, Leicester Square and Covent Garden. Day 2 they toured more sites of London seeing major landmarks like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Pont de la Tour, Hyde Park, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Windsor Castle and in the evening took in a play at West End Theatre; Britain’s version of Broadway.
Taking the Chunnel to France, the students then began their tour of historic WW II and WW I sites. They visited “In Flanders Fields” Museum, St. Julien Memorial, Ypres Salient Memorials and Hill 62. The next day they visited Normandy. But before leaving Flanders they visited the Passchendael Canadian Memorial Park a WW I memorial park honouring Canadian contributions there.
From Flanders they travelled to Normandy via Vimy Ridge where they saw WW I trenches and endless graves made famous by the poem “In Flanders Fields.”
At Normandy they visited Arromanches Museum, the Juno Beach Centre and Beny-sur-Mer Canadian Military Cemetary.
The next leg of the trip they travelled to Paris where they did a guided city walk seeing sites like Notre Dame Cathedral, Ile St. Louis, Latin Quarter and the Louvre. Another day’s touring of France took them to the Arc de Triomphe, Versailles and the Eiffel Tower.
Students also spent a day in Belgium where most of them agreed that the chocolate was the highlight.
Kaylie Lundgren said the highlight of the trip for her was visiting the Eiffel Tower. Cara Wittich liked Versailes and Adrienne McLean said for her it was visiting historic places that she had written about for school. “It was so much cooler to see it in person,” said McLean.
Teacher Dan Mack said that the trip really gave him a new appreciation of history.
The students arrived home on March 16th.