Vimy Oak

[plaque]
VIIMY OAKS LEGACY
LEGS des CHÊNES de VIMY

THE VIMY OAKS STORY

The Battle of Vimy Ridge in northern France, April 9th to April 12th, 1917, is considered to be
one of the defining events in the history of our nation. Where Allied troops had struggled and
failed, the Canadians overcame great odds and eventually captured the Ridge at a cost of some
10,600 casualties. After the battle, Lieutenant Leslie Miller of Scarborough, Ontario serving
with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, gathered up a handful of acorns from a partially
buried English oak (Quercus robur) on the Ridge. He sent the acorns home to his family with
instructions to plant them. In 1919 Lieutenant Miller returned, was given a 25 acre section of his
father's Scarborough farm and transplanted the oaks along the borders of this woodlot. He named
his farm "The Vimy Oaks". Today, a number of these majestic oaks are thriving in the same but
smaller woodlot under close care of the Scarborough Chinese Baptist Church that purchased
the farm property in 2002.

In January 2014, a group of volunteers, the "Vimy Oaks Legacy Corporation", decided to
repatriate offspring of these descendants oaks back to Vimy Ridge, whose oak trees had all been
destroyed in the First World War. These Vimy Oak saplings will be planted in the Vimy
Foundation Centennial Park, adjacent to the Canadian National Vimy Memorial site, as part of
centennial commemoration in France in 2017 and 2018.

The non-profit Vimy Oaks Legacy Corporation has undertaken to offer Vimy Oak saplings
grown in Canada for sale to qualifying organizations and individuals to be planted at
commemorative sites throughout Canada to honour the soldiers who fought at Vimy Ridge and
other battles during the First World War.