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By Dean Broughton

I felt the sorrow evoked by the hundreds of empty boots that lined the hills of the Vimy Ridge monument in Northern France during the centenary in 2017. I had made the pilgrimage to honour my grandfather, whose guns had rained steel and fire on those hills on April 9, 1917.

I came seeking something—connection, maybe even redemption—as I tried to find myself after I walked away from the newsroom life I had known for 28 years. That journey into the past helped anchor me in something larger than myself. But the journey didn’t end there.

This summer, I will return to Vimy—but I’m not going alone.

I’m taking my 17-year-old son. He’ll walk the same ground, touch the sa

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