{"id":1309,"date":"2017-04-07T12:46:45","date_gmt":"2017-04-07T18:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/?p=1309"},"modified":"2017-04-07T12:54:23","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T18:54:23","slug":"the-battle-for-vimy-ridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/the-battle-for-vimy-ridge\/","title":{"rendered":"The Battle for Vimy Ridge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t usually get too serious on this blog, but today I&#8217;m going to, because this is important.<\/p>\n<p>This weekend is the 100 year anniversary of the beginning of the Battle for Vimy Ridge.<\/p>\n<p>You can&#8217;t grow up in Canada and not know about Vimy Ridge &#8212; it&#8217;s seen as one of the things which helped shape our nation, which brought us together as a nation and inspired national pride. Documentaries and Heritage Minutes tend to frame it as &#8216;Other nations tried to take the ridge but we prevailed where they did not!&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rH0Gx3OFFyk\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It continues to instill pride to this day. I&#8217;ve never served in the military (though a good number of my ancestors have) but I still tear up with pride (and sadness) whenever I watch a Heritage Minute or documentary about Vimy Ridge.<\/p>\n<p>It matters.<\/p>\n<p>It mattered to the war, to the world, to our country and it matters to me.<\/p>\n<p>So it was only a question\u00a0of time before it showed up in my fiction. But when it did I knew I was going to have to tread very carefully. And I did.<\/p>\n<p>Although it&#8217;s never expressly stated in the text, in my story, Circles Within Circles, Michael is about to participate in <strong>this<\/strong> battle when he contacts his sister for help. That help made me really nervous, because in no way did I want to tell a story where incubus magic was the thing which made the Canadians successful in taking the ridge but I also really wanted for that to be the battle Michael was about to engage in.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, Michael is in the same battalion that my family served in during WWI and WWII. It matters to me that even in something as fluffy as a paranormal romance story I \u00a0respect those men and what they fought and died for. That I not minimize their struggles or their victories.<\/p>\n<p>In the end the magic that shields Michael actually unshields some of his fellows&#8211;balance. That didn&#8217;t feel disrespectful. It worked for my conscience, my pride, and the story.<\/p>\n<p>As I said, this weekend is the 100 year anniversary of the beginning of that terrible battle and I will be spending a lot of time thinking about those soldiers&#8211;what they were fighting for, what they endured and what they accomplished. I hope you will too.<\/p>\n<p>Never forget.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/T6oUw01DEu4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t usually get too serious on this blog, but today I&#8217;m going to, because this is important. This weekend is the 100 year anniversary of the beginning of the Battle for Vimy Ridge. You can&#8217;t grow up in Canada &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/the-battle-for-vimy-ridge\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-just-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1313,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions\/1313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.corividae.com\/shiny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}