Friday 17 April 2015

2015 Canadian Battlefields of Europe tour

In two weeks I'll be off to Amsterdam to begin the 2015 Canadian Battlefields tour of Northwest Europe. I'll try and post some photos with commentary after I get back. In the meantime, if you're interested, look me up on Flickr for some photos from last year's battlefields tour. The itinerary is very similar this year, beginning in Amsterdam and taking in a few days of celebrations commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Dutch liberation in May 1945. Then we proceed to Bruges and the Ypres salient in Belgium along with Vimy Ridge and the Somme to explore the First World War battlefields. Next we travel to Dieppe before moving on to Normandy and then ending the tour in Paris.

For a look at a more detailed itinerary, see https://www.insightvacations.com/ca/special-offers/expert-hosted-collection/battlefields-of-europe

Plans for 2016 will include two offerings of the Canadian Battlefields trip, plus a Holocaust tour. All tours will be offered by Insight Vacations with yours truly hosting and offering historical commentary on the sites. For more information on any of these tours, feel free to send me an e-mail.

Tuesday 7 April 2015

Plans for 2016

So our plans for a 2015 tour have come to naught, but there's always next year. I'm not planning to organize another student tour with EF but I will be working with Insight Vacations to offer a Holocaust tour again in 2016. There will also be battlefield tours to the places we study in my History of War and Peace class at the University of Winnipeg. These tours will be marketed nationally, and perhaps also in the USA, so hitting any registration quotas should be much easier than it was this last year. Stay tuned for updates as plans develop.

Monday 30 September 2013

The 2013 Holocaust in Europe tour: a hugely successful trip

I've been meaning to post something on the May 2013 Holocaust tour and update the photos on this blog, but just haven't gotten around to it. I'll try to find some time to do so before too long. Suffice to say the trip was extremely enlightening. In fact, I still don't really have adequate words to express what it meant to us all, and I've been reflecting on it for four months now.









Our group from Winnipeg in front of a remnant of the ghetto wall in Warsaw.

 
 
 
 




 
 
 
The memorial at Belzec, the first of the Operation Reinhard extermination camps.


 
The memorial to 1500 murdered Jews just outside Jozefow, in the Lublin district of central Poland. The location is just outside the town, about five minutes away from the main town square, yet very few of the residents seemed to know where it was. Across the road, hidden in the forest, are three mass graves. 

 
 
The infamous main gate at Auschwitz. Work did not set them free, as the motto promised.

 


The Old-New Synagogue in Prague's Jewish quarter.


 
Yours truly in Prague.

 
 

Stumble stones in Salzburg remind pedestrians of the victims of Nazi genocide.