Once upon a time before COVID changed how and if we traveled, Canadians who came to Normandy in France to see where D-Day happened would typically visit sites along the ten-kilometer strip of coastline designated Juno Beach by Allied planners. Most plan their visit around the Juno Beach Centre at Courseulles-sur-Mer; about 300,000 Canadians have visited the site since its opening in June 2003. Far less will go to the other actual landing sites just minutes away. Fewer still, a handful by comparison, will travel, or even know to travel, just a few kilometers inland where other lesser known but no less significant stories of Canada’s Normandy Campaign are found. One of these Canadian stories occurred not far from the Norman capital of Caen. Located near the villages of Authie and Buron, about a twenty-minute drive from the coast, is the Abbaye d’Ardenne. Built in the 11thcentury, the Abbaye was home to a religious order and over the centuries was subjected to sieges, lootings, and war. But perhaps the Abbaye’s darkest chapter is a much more recent one involving Canadians seventyseven years ago. On the morning of 6 June 1944, the largest seaborne invasion in history was launched along an eighty kilometer stretch of Norman coastline – D-Day. Within hours tens of thousands Canadian, British, and American soldiers were ashore and moving inland to form a bridgehead. The Canadian advance was made by the 3rd Infantry Division supported tanks of the 2nd Armoured Brigade. While new to battle, the Canadians in Normandy were well trained and equipped. In fact, they were the most powerful Allied formation to land on 6 June. As the Canadians gained their foothold in France, the Germans called in reserves to the counter the allied advance. By John Goheen The Garden
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