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CanHist looks to Belgium and France for Remembrance tour

January 15, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

There are vacancies in a Remembrance tour of Belgium and France.

The CanHist-organized tour is an annual jaunt and the Orangeville Rotary Club got the ball rolling on this year’s edition.

Neil Orford, president and founder of Small Towns Big Ideas, said people can register until Jan. 19 for a spot on the tour. There’s room for as many as 35 people.

This year’s tour will take place from Nov. 1 to 15.

The trips vary. There has been a walking trip to England when they walked along Hadrian’s Wall. Other times they’ve gone to Paris.

“We don’t generally organize the big attractions, like the Louvre,” he said. “They (participants) prefer to set their own times for those.”

Orford loves the smaller museums.

“We end up in Montmartre because that’s where you end up at the end of the day there,” Orford said.

Admittedly, organizing the tours is a lot of work but as a history teacher, he “loves to see the history in the students’ eyes,” he said. “Doing Remembrance Day on Juno Beach, I see people completely feel themselves walking in the footsteps of the soldiers. The Juno Beach Centre does a great job of communicating the war.

“And once Canadians go to the cemeteries, there is no notion of glorifying. They are witnessing the tragic experiences those soldiers suffered.”

An artist travelled with the tour in 2018 and painted renderings of the trip.

“These are very powerful images,” Orford said. “People go through trips and come back changed. I saw it with every young person I took and I see it now.”

Orford meets everyone in Paris and the tours start there.

Everything is included on the CanHist tour, including the exchange dollar to Euros on the cost of the tour.

“We like to offload everybody,” he said. “Suggest you come with 300 Euros for tips, snacks. Breakfast is included at all the hotels and there are six dinners and four lunches. A good traveller may bring some change home.” 

Although the tours see mainly a mix of travellers, there are often regulars on every trip.

Orford has adopted a model in the last few years that “invites a group to come to me with their ideas,” he said. “Popular now are wine tours, but we will listen to most ideas.”

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