Sanctuary Wood Park was dedicated by the Canada Lands Company on January 18, 2006, as part of their redevelopment of Edmonton’s former Canadian Forces Base (Griesbach Barracks). The park was named for the original Sanctuary Wood, where a Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery contains the First World War graves of 1,990 Commonwealth soldiers, of whom 1,353 are unidentified.
In the early months of the First World War, as the first Battle of Ypres in Belgium raged, British troops found shelter in a pine forest they called Sanctuary Wood. It lay within the Ypres salient, a bulge in the front line where British and Canadian forces halted the German advance and held the last remaining portion of unoccupied Belgium. On 1 June 1916, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry relieved Edmonton’s 49th Battalion in the trenches of Sanctuary Wood. The day after the Patricia’s arrived at Sanctuary Wood, the Germans launched a massive offensive, and captured the strategically high ground of Mount Sorrel, Hill 61, and Hill 62. The Patricia’s were left exposed and lost almost half their initial strength, but they held their position. Of the units ordered to reinforce the exposed Patricia’s, only the 49th Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel William Griesbach, arrived in time. Together they held the line. The broader Battle of Mount Sorrel ended on 13 June when the Canadians retook the lost heights, which remained in Allied hands until 1918.