The front page of the Flanders Fields Post, to be distributed in Toronto on Monday. Photo: William Wolfe-Wylie On Aug. 4, 100 years to the day after Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium, Toronto will be invaded by newspaper boys sharing the news on old timey newspapers.
The Flanders Fields Post is a one-time distribution organized by Visit Flanders, an organization based in Belgium to commemorate the lives lost in the region and keep the stories of the people who sacrificed everything there alive.
Line Vreven, Director and Regional Manager North America for Visit Flanders, says the old newspaper is a throw back to 1914 and will be held in several cities around the world.
“The newspaper is a great flashback to 1914, sort of a time machine which allows us to see how the news was portrayed and how paperboys distributed news at that time. It also attempts to show people’s concerns of the era,” she said.
“More than 60,000 Canadian soldiers gave their lives in WWI. The population was only eight million at the time, so that’s like losing more than 260,000 people by today’s population,” Vreven said.
Flanders is under two hours from both Paris and Amsterdam, so the organization hopes more Canadians will make 2014 their year to visit and see the fields that inspired the iconic poem.
The newspapers will be distributed starting at Old City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square around 8:30 on Monday morning. The newspaper boys will spread out from there.
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