Hill 70 Memorial Park Inaugurates Brutinel Visitors Pavilion, Completing Canadian WWI Battlefield Site

On June 10, 2026, Hill 70 Memorial Park in Loos-en-Gohelle, France, formally inaugurated the Brutinel Visitors Pavilion, the last major structure to be completed at the site commemorating the Battle of Hill 70 (August 1917) — the first major operation planned and commanded entirely by Canadian officers, under Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Currie, in which more than 100,000 Canadians fought. The pavilion is named for Brigadier-General Raymond Brutinel, a French-born Canadian officer who founded the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade, one of the first motorized machine-gun formations in the British Empire. The ceremony included media accreditation from midday, an official dedication at 13:25 local time, and a tour of the memorial park, marking the culmination of a multi-year effort by the Hill 70 Memorial Project to complete the battlefield site.