OUR STORIES IN STONE
PART 7
Bravery and spirit, larger than life
CHRIS MIKULA, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
War Memorial: The Response was dedicated to those who served and lost their lives in the First World War. The addition of the
Second World War and the Korean War has made the memorial a national symbol of Canadian sacrifice in time of war.
At the National War Memorial, 22 bronze men and women remind us of Canadians who built this nation
BY ROBERT SIBLEY
’ve never forgotten the first time I
saw the National War Memorial. It
was the spring of 1976, and I’d returned to Canada after a couple of
years travelling. During a stopover
in Ottawa, I walked along Wellington
Street to Confederation Square, stopping
at the foot of the memorial.
Years later, in a 1995 essay for the Citizen, I wrote about that encounter. “Looking up at the green-stained soldiers, I remembered during my travels in Europe
visiting the Vimy Memorial in France,
with the names of thousands of soldiers
posted missing and presumed dead
etched on its massive ramparts. I recalled standing on those ramparts, look-
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ing out across the Douai plain and imagining those young men clawing their way
up a muddy slope under the hail of enemy fire, and feeling — in hindsight, I
know no other way of putting it — very
Canadian. Now, at this smaller memorial
in Ottawa, I felt something similar.”
I am obviously more familiar with the
War Memorial, having lived in Ottawa
for nearly 25 years. Unfortunately, familiarity tends to breed complacency. The
monument has become part of the background of my everyday life. Today,
though, as I continue to explore the national capital’s monuments, I’d like to recover something of that first response.
The memorial has lost none of its
sculptural impressiveness, I tell myself as
I circle the huge pedestal. The Response,
as British sculptor Vernon March titled
his creation, was unveiled May 21, 1939,
by King George VI. It was dedicated to
those who’d served and lost their lives in
the First World War from 1914 to 1918. The
addition of other dates — the Second
World War between 1939 and 1945 and
the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 — has
made the memorial a national symbol of
Canadian sacrifice in time of war.
Standing on the steps below the monument, I study the larger-than-life figures — 22 bronze men and women and a
horse hauling a field gun — plunging
through the granite archway. Each charging figure represents a branch of the
armed forces that served during the
Great War — infantry, artillery, navy, air
force, medical corps, nurses.
The figures are historically accurate in
terms of uniforms and equipment —
everything from a kilted soldier carrying
a Vickers machine-gun to a cavalryman
on horseback pulling an 18-pound field
gun.
The allegorical winged figures on top
of the arch bring “the blessings of Victory, Peace and Liberty in the footsteps of
the people’s heroism and self-sacrifice
(as) they are passing through the archway below,” Col. John Gardam wrote in
a 1982 Veterans Affairs publication, The
National War Memorial.
Or, as King George put it 70 years ago:
“Not by chance both the crowning figures of peace and freedom stand side by
side. Peace and Freedom cannot be long
separated … without freedom there can
be no enduring peace, and without peace
no enduring freedom.”
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at
the base of the War Memorial adds to the
symbolic significance of the monument.
The tomb, placed in Confederation
Square in 2000, contains the remains of a
Canadian soldier who died during the
First World War. Sculptor Mary-Ann
Liu’s bronze sword and helmet adorns
the sarcophagus, reminding me of the
burial vaults of medieval knights in English cathedrals.
Walking around the monuments I
think of how hundreds gather here every
Remembrance Day. The crowds seem to
get bigger each year, as though the need
to remember becomes ever greater as
the veterans disappear into history.
It is this need to remember that creates monuments, scholars say.
Nations forge an identity between the
individual and the community by building symbolic objects such as monuments that embed in the individual consciousness an awareness of significant
communal events and experiences that
would otherwise be forgotten with the
passage of time.
That’s certainly the deep purpose of
the National War Memorial, says scholar Susan Phillips-Desroches in a 2002
essay.
Vernon March’s monument sought
“to symbolically represent the people of
Canada through this group of men and
women who went overseas to fight in
the Great War … and to record their actions for future generations.” Those figures beneath the arch symbolize “the
going forth of the nation; a symbolic
birth of a triumphant people.” In this
light, the War Memorial should be seen
as both a memorial to the fallen and as a
nation-building project.
Prime Minister Mackenzie King first
proposed the War Memorial in 1923, and
took considerable interest in its design,
Sculptor Mary-Ann Liu’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier contains the remains of a
Canadian soldier who died during the First World War.
says Phillips-Desroches.
“King attempted to establish a ‘foundational myth’ that would see Canadians
through the difficult transition from a
war-time to a peace-time society and
economy and realize the sacrifices made
by the men and women had a positive
outcome for the nation,” she writes in
her Carleton University master’s thesis,
Canada’s National War Memorial: Reflection of the Past or Liberal Dream?
“The icon chosen to deliver King’s message of the emergent nation was the image of the Great War soldier, whose bravery and spirit had brought the country
together.”
I run my hand along the smooth surface of the soldier’s tomb, remembering
uncles who fought in the Second World
War, and recalling Remembrance Day
ceremonies I’ve seen over the years.
I turn to look down Elgin Street, conjuring the crowds, the faltering ranks of
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aging veterans and, after them, the
firmer lines of serving soldiers.
And then I see my son marching with
the rest of his Cameron Highlanders
cadet troop.
And for a moment all those memories
— a long-ago visit to Vimy Ridge, a
springtime in Ottawa, a Remembrance
Day parade a decade ago — converge to
make me feel, well, strangely Canadian.
Robert Sibley is a senior writer
for the Citizen.