VIMY RIDGE, France — Prime Minister Stephen Harper toured the First World War battlefield at Vimy Ridge on Tuesday where he quipped that the enemy now carries news cameras, not guns.

Harper made the comment during a photo-opportunity at a front line Canadian trench, just metres from the opposing German line.

"These were sand, not cement," Harper said of the reconstructed sandbags.

"And the enemy carried guns, not cameras," he added, looking directly over the lip of the old trench at a small clutch of Canadian TV and still cameras.

It was his first tour of the First World War battlefield in France where some have said Canada earned its stripes as an independent country.

Harper's tour of the deeply moving site marks the closing leg of his week-long diplomatic mission.

Troops from all four Canadian divisions fought together for the first time at Vimy, and scored the first decisive Allied victory of the war there in 1917.

The Vimy Memorial, which took more than a decade to build, is currently in the midst of a major restoration, exactly 70 years after its dedication in July 1936. It's official re-dedication will take place next April.

Harper and his wife, Laureen, also stopped at a military graveyard in the village of Barlin, where Laureen cried over the headstone of her great uncle, James Edward Teskey of Okotoks, Alta.. He died at age 19 in the battle of Arras in June, 1917.

Harper is spending two days in France en route home from Russia, where he participated in the G8 conference over the weekend.

Harper was scheduled to meet with French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin later Tuesday when he was expected to get a first-hand account of de Villepin's whirlwind visit Monday to war-torn Lebanon.