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There are expected to be 25,000 of us here this weekend to honour a young country's great losses and the generation of brave men who gave up their lives on the hills and swamps of Pas-de-Calais for the “war to end all wars.”

Among the fallen were two of my relatives: a young Newfoundlander whose name I bear and a young Prince Edward Islander who also answered the call to arms and died here.

In life, they shared only the bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In death, though, these men became the link between the doctor and nurse who were to become my parents.

So, in addition to exploring the powerful forces and loyalties that led them to this corner of northern France, I have come to honour a different sort of mythology — a story of beginnings instead of endings.

I could say, in fact, that I owe my start in life to the gleaming marble of the Vimy Memorial.

In the summer of 1936, the Canadian Legion invited anyone who had served in the war or had lost close relatives in it to join what was dubbed the “Vimy Pilgrimage” to France and Britain.

This sparked widespread public interest and saturation news coverage. After all, the monument had been 15 years in the design and assembly, ran over budget and was the subject of official inquiries and fact-finding tours.

Finally, it was to be unveiled with all of the fanfare Canada, Great Britain and France could muster — including a dedication by Edward VIII (one of his few international engagements before he fled into the arms of divorcée Wallis Simpson).

And hey, it was also fun. The Legion was organizing transportation, hotels and tours, making it the affordable adventure of a lifetime for those who had never travelled overseas before. In addition to Vimy, Paris, London and Stratford-on-Avon were on the itinerary.

Not surprisingly, the expedition was oversubscribed. And when the ocean liners slipped their lines on July 16, the docks and the banks of the St. Lawrence were lined with well-wishers. Almost a dozen bands played, planes of the fledgling Royal Canadian Air Force swooped overhead and the air was filled with a cacophony of ships' horns.

On board, first-class cabins were filled with military and political elites. Many returning veterans of the Canada Corps travelled as a unit, complete with regimental bands. And there were the mourners: women wearing loved ones' decorations, mothers with silver crosses for each son.

Mrs. C.S. Woods from Winnipeg had 12 sons in the war — five of them were killed at the front and three died later from their war wounds. She was the poster image of bereavement and would be presented to the King.

Among the passengers on the Cunard White Star steamship Antonia were my parents-to-be.

A. Lacey Winsor, a 31-year-old family physician from Norton, N.B., was going to Vimy to pay tribute to his brother, Willie. Willie was the oldest son in the family, with all the makings of leadership. No one blinked when he answered the call of duty, breaking off his pre-medicine studies to sign up for the Canadian Field Artillery. It was just something one did.

Lacey had other reasons to go to Europe too. After Vimy, he was taking a refresher medical course at a hospital in London. And — something of a rake at university and as an intern — the eligible bachelor might also have been looking for a solution to the shortage of appropriate candidates for socializing in his tiny town.

Jean Mildred Townsend was a 29-year-old health nurse (and something of a fashion plate) from Summerside, PEI. She qualified for the pilgrimage because her first cousin, Gunner Arthur Johnstone, was killed at Lieven.

Although she had not been particularly close to him, when Arthur's younger brother, Edwin, invited her to accompany him on the Vimy Pilgrimage, she jumped at the opportunity. Jean was independent-minded — and in addition to family fealty, it was whispered by the relatives that she was taking the opportunity to get away from an engagement to a young United Church minister.

Of course, the passengers on the Antonia shared a noble and serious common purpose. Participants were given a special beret — with a Vimy medal pinned to the cap with images of the monument and the sculptures — that became a uniform for the trip. As the official inscription on the memorial put it, the journey was an official salute “to the valour of their countrymen in the Great War and in memory of their 60,000 dead.”

There was, however, plenty of time to make new acquaintances. And, in due course, Jean and her friend, Sue Meadows, a music teacher from the Island, were introduced to “Dr. Lacey.”

Raised by a prominent Newfoundland outport family, Lacey used to sail on his father's schooner to the Labrador cod fishery. But he had long since left Bonavista Bay behind, going to medical school at Queen's University in Kingston and financing his studies by working summers in New York. He now conveyed a worldly charm with just a hint of a bayman's accent — as well as an easy self-confidence and an understated sense of humour.

Both Jean and Sue were intrigued. Eligible doctors were in even shorter supply than eligible ministers. As the ship steamed toward France, though, the three were having coffee together in a lounge and Jean sized up the situation. “I think three's a crowd,” she murmured, heading to her cabin.

Lacey stopped her, indicating that perhaps the wrong third was leaving. “That's when I knew Lacey was more interested in me,” she later told her sister, Margaret, with pride.

With dances every evening, dinners with the captain and other entertainment, Lacey and Jean saw a lot of each other. By the time the Antonia had docked at Le Havre and the pilgrims had travelled on trains for Lille and Arras, it was clear they would be going to visit Vimy's monument and trenches together.

There are pictures of the couple admiring the statues of sculptor Walter Allward and cheering Edward VIII. Indeed there seemed to be mass excitement among the pilgrims when he walked through the crowd.

It was a recognition of the Canadians' sacrifice that made him proud, Lacey said later.

True, neither Lacey's brother nor Jean's cousin died here in what has become the most celebrated Canadian battle of the First World War. No heroics, no Victoria Crosses for them, just the deadly random roulette of the trenches.

Arthur Johnstone, service number 92903, was a bright and ambitious Charlottetown student who dreamed of returning to Canada to become a lawyer. He bled to death in 1917 after a German shrapnel burst severed his femoral artery as he was trimming a buddy's hair.

William Winsor, service number 126201, was killed by gas poisoning at the age of 21 in what is known as counter-battery fire, or routine desultory shelling. He missed by two days the battle at Amiens, which German Chief of Staff Erich Ludendorff said was the darkest day for the German Army.

But the deaths in battles elsewhere during the four years of fighting were no less tragic than those at Vimy and their families were no less bereaved. Lacey and Jean talked about the impact of their Vimy experience often in subsequent years and how it had changed their lives.

What followed was equally life-changing. After the sadness at Vimy, it was on to Paris and then to London for more ceremonies and celebrations — including a garden party at Buckingham Palace.

Pretty heady stuff for a budding romance. Which might have contributed to Jean's decision to stay on in Europe and tour England and Scotland while Lacey took his course in London. The couple travelled back to Canada together. And, if there ever was doubt about where the relationship was going, it was resolved on the trip back.

There were, mind you, tense moments when they disembarked in Canada. Jean was apprehensive about telling the minister back in Summerside that it was all over. Lacey undertook what Jean described as the “farewell tour” to tell former girlfriends in Montreal, Kingston and Toronto that he was engaged.

But my parents were married without a hitch in Summerside the following June. I was born exactly nine months later and Jean was so concerned that I might arrive prematurely that she didn't tell her family she was pregnant until she sent out the birth notices.

Just three years after Edward VIII and French president Albert Lebrun pulled the ropes to release the shrouds on the Vimy memorial to peace, the Allies were at war again. This time, the Canadian Parliament made its own declaration instead of being considered part of the British initiative.

The same day, Reserve Captain Lacey Winsor went into Saint John and signed up for the Royal Canadian Medical Corps. There is a picture of him in the family archives in an oddly old-fashioned-looking uniform holding his 15-month-old son as he departed for the barracks.

His team checked out recruits on their way into the army and was later assigned to lead a rehabilitation corps for recruits brought back to Canada to recover from wounds before returning to Europe.

Then came his chance to get close the action: an assignment to a converted hospital ship, the SS Lady Nelson. There was great excitement as the man who had spent his boyhood on fishing schooners got ready to go back to sea. A large khaki metal trunk with Major A.E.L. Winsor stencilled on it arrived in Norton and Jean proceeded to fill it with rationed goodies as well as uniforms and underwear.

But a telegram soon arrived from Canadian Medical Corps headquarters in Ottawa saying that Lacey's posting was cancelled. It turned out another doctor with political pull in Ottawa had lobbied for what was deemed the prized assignment.

Totally out of keeping with his good nature, Lacey was furious and booked a train for Ottawa. He decided to take me with him and a local tailor made a miniature army uniform, complete with brass buttons that had to be shined every day, that fit my six-year-old frame.

In Ottawa, we went to the Peace Tower and found the entry for William Augustus Winsor on Page 525 of the First World War Book of Remembrance. Then Lacey went to RCAMC headquarters and raised “holy hell.”

The squirming officers conceded that he had been improperly denied the hospital ship posting. In a typical bureaucratic ploy, however, they tried to cool out the storm by promoting him to Lieutenant-Colonel with broader responsibilities for army medical services in New Brunswick.

Lacey was disappointed he never got overseas, but as a result he was given increased responsibilities in Canada and he was often close enough to home to squeeze in a few of his civilian patients. When the war ended, he returned to his practice as a widely appreciated country doctor.

Still, every Nov. 11 was special. As the bugler played Last Post at two minutes to 11 o'clock, we were always there at the Norton war memorial — a modest granite plinth, with none of the marble ornamentation of Vimy.

Some of the patterns of childhood have stuck. In memory of my father, I still go on Remembrance Day to the National War Memorial in Ottawa to watch those now very aged veterans pick up their pace behind the pipes and drums as they march by the reviewing stand.

And I've ended up here at the Vimy Memorial — the final thread in a 90-year skein of Winsor-Vimy entanglement — in part because of another love story.

Christina Cameron is the former director-general of national historic sites for Parks Canada and one of the leading international experts on the World Heritage Convention of UNESCO.

Four years ago, when the government responded to the controversy over the deterioration of the Vimy monument, she was asked to chair an advisory committee dedicated to its restoration and she was invited to France to mark the project's completion.

Christina is my wife — so I'm tagging along to retrace the steps of Willie Winsor and Art Johnstone, and to visit their graves with my father's Vimy pilgrimage medal in my pocket. But I will also be celebrating the lives that the first memorial journey brought together.

For Jean and Lacey, Vimy was a symbol of their good luck in finding each other — the irony that they had gone to mourn losses and came back on the cusp of a new life is a part of our family folklore.

Hugh Winsor is a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery and a former columnist with The Globe and Mail.