sites unseen - ottawa citizen · 4 the spirit of a community, its self-un-derstanding, is revealed,...

OUR STORIES IN STONE PART 1

In Ottawa, we’re so accustomed to statues and memorials

that we no longer see them. They are …

Sitesunseen

But Citizen writer ROBERT SIBLEY

and photographer CHRIS MIKULA, left,

stopped to take a closer look. Here are their

impressions of our memorials —

and what they tell us about ourselves and the soul of the city.

CHRIS MIKULA, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

2

Stopping among statues

CHRIS MIKULA , THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

Simply walking by Sir Galahad will be harder to do once you know the story of the brave and selfless Henry Albert Harper.

Monuments are stories in stone and bronze that reflect who

we are and where we came from. Here in Ottawa, we’re so used to these

memorials that we no longer see them. But say you made time to stop?

Where would you go? And where would it take you?

ROBERT SIBLEY finds out on a hunt for the soul of the city

Everybody ignores Sir Galahad. Foran hour I’ve been parked on abench at the corner of Metcalfe

and Wellington streets, watching earlymorning strollers, office workers andtourists. The tourists are easy to spot intheir gaudy clothing and thick-soledshoes. I keep waiting for someone, any-

one, to stop at Sir Galahad, a statuededicated a century ago to the memoryof Henry Albert Harper that occupiesprime real estate on Wellington in frontof a Parliament Hill gate.

Nobody does. Instead, they seem toprefer the Terry Fox statue in the plaza.A couple of Chinese girls in shorts and

flip-flops take pictures of each other be-neath the famous cross-country runner’sbronze legs, natural and artificial. A mid-dle-aged couple in shorts and sun hatsfollow suit. Another young couple readsthe plaque about the young man’s at-tempt in 1980 to run across Canada toraise awareness about cancer.

3

Obscurely, I’m disappointed. In thespring of 1976, during my first visit to Ot-tawa, a friend took me on the obligatorytour of Parliament Hill. We strolled alongWellington Street to Bank Street andthen on to Parliament Hill, following thecurve of the driveway in front of theHouse of Commons and past the Senate,emerging on Wellington with the Na-tional War Memorial on our left at thetop of Elgin Street. We were heading thatway when I spotted the statue of SirGalahad farther up the sidewalk on myright.

I’ve always been an inveterate readerof plaques, a compulsive inspector ofmonuments. Sir Galahad struck me asoddly out of place — the bronze figureof a young man wrapped in a wind-whipped cloak, sword in one hand,standing on a granite block, looking upinto the sky, dreamily unaware he’s aboutto fall into traffic if he takes a step for-ward. I had to investigate.

And so I had my introduction to HenryAlbert Harper, a young civil servant who,as the plaque relates, drowned in his 28thyear trying to save Miss Bessie Blairwhen the young woman fell through theice on the Ottawa River on Dec. 6, 1901.

I read the line from Idylls of the King:The Holy Grail, Lord Tennyson’s epic po-

em about King Arthur and his knights,carved into the granite pedestal: “If I losemyself I save myself.”

Of course, I would learn more aboutthe Harper Memorial years later after Imoved to Ottawa — how, for instance,the statue of Sir Galahad, the chivalrousknight of Arthurian legend, was chosen by his close friend, William LyonMackenzie King, the future prime min-ister, and was modelled on George Fred-erick Watts’s famous painting, Sir Gala-had. But it was the image of Sir Galahad— not the statues of prime ministers orthe Parliament Buildings — that lingeredin my memory long after my first visit tothe capital.

THE PAST IS PRESENTSo now, on another day 33 years later,

it seems appropriate to begin a “pilgrim-age” of Ottawa’s monuments with thestatue that first captured my imagination.

Living in Ottawa, you become so usedto the presence of monuments — thePeacekeeping Monument on Sussex Dri-ve or the Human Rights monument infront of City Hall on Elgin Street, for ex-ample — that you no longer really seethem. It’s a paradoxical situation. Monu-ments — objects whose function “is tocelebrate or perpetuate the memory of

particular events, ideas, individuals orgroups of persons,” as geographerWilbur Zelinsky put it — are built to im-pinge on our consciousness, to make usremember and, presumably, think abouta particular historical event or person orsituation.

But as the novelist Robert Musil onceobserved, “There is nothing in the worldas invisible as monuments.” We erectthem to be seen, to attract attention; yet,at the same time, “something has im-pregnated them against attention. Like adrop of water on an oilskin, attentionruns down them without stopping for amoment.”

Does familiarity breed complacency?Do we lose sight of what is before oureyes? Geographers argue that the prob-lem with monuments is that we tend toignore statues and other commemorativeartifacts because they become part of theunconscious background to our lives. Wesee them but we are no longer con-sciously aware of their presence, and,hence, we become detached from thepurpose they are intended to serve.

This series is a response to complacen-cy, a field guide for the recovery of acommunal spirit. I am out to discover, or,more precisely, reclaim, the soul of thecity.

As I walked the length of the granite

wall, touching the inscribed names,

catching my reflection in the

polished stone, I couldn’t help

but feel loss and sorrow even though

I lost no relatives or friends

to the Vietnam war.

VIETNAM MEMORIAL CHIP SOMODEVILLA, GETTY IMAGES

I had a similar experience at the

Vimy Memorial in France, where

the names of thousands of

Canadian soldiers are carved.

Imagining those young men

clawing their way up a muddy slope

under the hail of enemy fire, well,

I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t

feel a lump in their throat.

VIMY MEMORIAL WAYNE CUDDINGTON, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

4

The spirit of a community, its self-un-derstanding, is revealed, in part at least,in its artifacts. Museums and galleries,memorials and monuments, statues andplaques; they all reflect the ideas thatgive meaning and purpose to a place.Hence, my walking tour of Ottawa’smonuments and statues constitutes anattempt to tap the animating idea, thepsyche, of the nation’s capital.

WHERE DID WE COME FROM?I don’t think anybody would regard

Ottawa as a monumental city, at least inthe same way as, say, London, Washing-ton or Paris. London probably has morestatues than any city in the world. Kingsand queens, soldiers and politicians, po-ets and artists, explorers and educators,villains and heroes; you’ll find them en-sconced on a pedestal somewhere in themaze of London’s streets and parks.

Washington, too, displays a monumen-tal mindset in that grand view down theMall from the dome of Capital Hill to theshining pillars of the Lincoln Memorial.

What about Ottawa? Few would dis-pute that Canada’s national capital ismore modest in its monumental display.There is no grand Mall, no TrafalgarSquare, and no Arc de Triomphe. Whatdoes this say about the city in both its lo-cal identity and its place as a nationalcapital? Do our monuments demonstratean imaginative response to history or aninchoate confusion regarding our collec-tive past? Do they reflect an expansivenational vision or the poverty ofparochialism? Such questions form the“spiritual” backdrop to my walks.

Addressing those questions, however,also requires the recognition that mon-uments are more than artifacts of histor-ical reference, reminders of the past, al-though they are that, too. Statues,plaques, memorials, cenotaphs; they arestories in stone and bronze. They tell insymbolic language who we are andwhere we came from. As scholar JohnRoberts wrote in a 1999 study, monu-ments are “one of the most tangible im-prints that a person or group can leaveon the physical landscape.” In this re-gard, monuments are “deeply social,”and building a monument is a matter of“making thoughts and ideas into con-crete form.”

In this sense, monuments possess apsychological resonance as well as aphysical presence. Indeed, whether ornot we are consciously aware of it, themonument’s seeming permanence in thelandscape establishes a presence, aspace, in our minds, thereby fostering thepotential for identity between ourselvesand the communal memory that it seeksto perpetuate. Monuments connect theinner world of our psyches with the ex-

ternal physical world in which we act.We might ignore them as we pursue oureveryday lives, but that does not meanthey have no hold on us. Their presence— and their poignant power — remainsin our consciousness whether or not we pay attention. Landscape becomesmemoryscape because monuments con-flate communal and personal experi-ence.

The most powerful example I’ve expe-rienced of this is the Vietnam Memorialin Washington, D.C. I imagine someoneof the Great War generation felt the sameabout the National War Memorial in Ott-awa. For my generation, though, whetherAmerican or Canadian, the VietnamMemorial exerts a powerful claim on thepsyche. When I approached the monu-ment on my first visit several years ago, Isaw a cut in the earth and what appearedto be an inconsequential black wallahead. But as I came closer and thenwalked along the length of the granitewall, touching the inscribed names,catching my own reflection in the pol-ished stone, I couldn’t help but feel lossand sorrow even though I lost no rela-tives or friends to that war. Judging bythe behaviour of others around me —placing flowers, rubbing a finger across aname, in tears or in silence — I wasn’tthe only one affected by the pathos of theplace.

I had a similar experience many yearsago during a visit to the Vimy Memorial

in France, where the names of thousandsof Canadian soldiers posted missing andpresumed dead are carved into its mas-sive ramparts. Looking across the DouaiPlain, imagining those young men claw-ing their way up a muddy slope underthe hail of enemy fire, well, I don’t knowhow anyone wouldn’t feel a lump in theirthroat.

Not all monuments produce an emo-tional response, of course, but, some-times, with a bit of imagination and asense of historical empathy, a monumentcan provide a sense of connection withwhat’s gone before you. In Paris, for ex-ample, I long ago adopted — I adoptmonuments in most cities I visit — thestatue of Marshal Ney, the general whodefended Napoleon’s army during the re-treat from Moscow in 1812. He standswaving a sword beneath the chestnuttrees at the corner of boulevards St-Michel and Montparnasse. I like to ad-mire him from the nearby terrace ofCloserie des Lilas, imagining, as I sip mycafé au lait, the ebb and flow of ignorantarmies across Europe and how all thatclashing produced the modern world, forgood and ill.

The point is this: To be consciouslyaware of a monument, to attend to its“space,” is to realize the past can be re-claimed in the present, at least imagina-tively, and that it is possible to connectto the spirit of the past through the pres-ence of a physical object. Thus, monu-ments can be a means by which we tietogether the threads of our worldly ex-perience, symbolic objects throughwhich we create order amidst the ca-cophony of events, vehicles for preserv-ing our haphazard experience, commu-nal and personal, against the oblivion oftime.

REMEMBERING HENRY HARPER Does Sir Galahad serve this purpose?

I like to think so. My disappointment atthe lack of attention to Sir Galahad is, nodoubt, rooted in nostalgia for my youth-ful visit to Ottawa. Harper’s sacrifice wasso long ago it no longer forms part of thecommunal memory for more recent gen-erations. Someday the events that still at-tract attention to the Terry Fox statue —the young man’s attempt nearly 30 yearsago to run across Canada in aid of can-cer research — will also fade from publicmemory. But the Fox statue, like that ofHarper’s, will be here to remind thosewho attend to it that courage and hero-ism are always values to be honoured,and remembered.

I flip through my notebook to readthings I’ve learned about Henry Harper. Ifind a quotation from a 1904 memoirMackenzie King wrote on behalf of hisdead friend.

There is no grand Mall

in the national capital,

no Trafalgar Square,

no Arc de Triomphe.

What does this say

about Ottawa?

5

In the memoir, King reveals that thechoice of Tennyson’s line for the inscrip-tion was more than sentimentality. “Thecharacter of Harper’s act was sufficientin itself to suggest ‘Sir Galahad’ as a sub-ject suitable for a memorial of this kind,but the choice had, in fact, a more inti-mate association with Harper himself.Hanging on the wall above the desk inhis study was a carbon reproduction ofWatts’ painting. He had placed it therehimself, and often, in speaking of it toothers, had remarked, ‘There is my idealknight!’ ”

Harper and King had shared a two-bedroom apartment at 202 Maria St. forabout a year before Harper’s death. Kingwas the editor of the Labour Gazette, andhe’d hired Harper, a journalist whomhe’d known at the University of Torontowhere they were students, as associateeditor. Historian C.P. Stacey says themen were bound together by shared ide-alism. “We can strive together after anearnest Christian manhood seeking toinspire in each other what is most nobleand to lop off the sins and shortcomingswhich so easily beset us,” King wrote inhis diary in 1900.

The future prime minister never for-got his friend. On Dec. 6, 1944, 43 yearsafter Harper drowned, King would note“the anniversary of Harper’s death” inhis diary. A more evocative remem-brance was recorded Dec. 6, 1909. In theevening, King delivered his long-delayed

maiden speech as an MP in the House ofCommon. Later in his diary, he wrote:“Before going to the House at eight, I put10 little white roses on the base of theHarper Monument. It was beautiful toleave (them) there to look at when Icame out. It was in thinking before thedebate that I was alone — not a singlesoul to really share a discussion with, orto share a supreme hour of one’s life with— that I was suddenly reminded it wasthe anniversary of Bert’s death, and Iknew that the loss was irreparable.”

Harper certainly deserved remem-brance. As Stacey puts it, “On that win-

ter night on the Ottawa River duty calledto Bert Harper. Knowing that it was al-most certain death, he went into theblack water to try to save the girl.” Nor isthere much doubt that King was, inStacey’s words, “the moving spirit” to es-tablish a monument to his friend.

Four years after Harper’s death, onNov. 18, 1905, sculptor Ernest WiseKeyser’s statue of Sir Galahad was un-veiled at the head of Metcalfe Street (thelocation in large part thanks to King’slobbying). Thousands of Ottawa’s 60,000citizens attended the unveiling, includ-ing the Governor General, Lord Grey. “Asthe King’s representative unveiled themonument; at that moment the suncame out from behind a cloud,” theMorning Citizen reported on Nov. 20,1905.

Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier ac-cepted the statue on behalf of the nation.“The stranger to our city will pause as hepasses the monument and wonder whatdeed called for this erection,” he said in aspeech. “He will be told of the noble actof sacrifice, of a life given in effort to saveanother.” Canadians, Laurier concluded,“shall look upon this memorial as a na-tional monument in every sense of theword.”

That hopeful sentiment has obviouslyfaded with time, I think, as people walkpast Sir Galahad with nary a glance. Iknow I shouldn’t begrudge the greaterattention to Fox’s statue. He, too, de-serves remembrance. Yet, I do wishsomeone would remember Henry Harp-er.

Then it occurs to me: that’s my job.That’s the point of this series. I’m walk-ing to recall the communal spirit of thenation’s capital as reflected in its monu-ments, looking to find the city’s psycheby losing myself among its statuary.

I leave my bench and walk acrossWellington Street, patting Sir Galahad’sbronze toe as I head for Parliament Hill.

Robert Sibley is a senior writer for the

Citizen.

SOURCES

■ McKenzie King, The Secret of Heroism: A Memoir of Henry AlbertHarper, 1919 edition.■ John Roberts, Nation-building andMonumentalization in the Contemporary Capital, M.A. Thesis, Carleton University, 1999.■ C.P. Stacey, A Very Double Life: ThePrivate World of Mackenzie King, 1976.■ Wilbur Zelinsky, Nation into State: The Shifting Symbolic Foundations ofAmerican Nationalism, 1988.

I watch people walk past Sir

Galahad with nary a glance.

I shouldn’t begrudge the

greater attention to Terry

Fox’s statue.He, too,was a

hero deserving of

remembrance.Yet, I also

wish someone would

remember Henry Harper.

But then it occurs to me:

that’s my job.

Monuments celebrate happy, glorious ties between crown and city

PHOTOS BY CHRIS MIKULA, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

Some

Ottawans were

upset at the

realism with

which the king

of beasts was

portrayed.

Along came a

welder to

render the lion

anatomically

corrected.

In 1901, a statue of Queen Victoria was unveiled

with much pomp and ceremony on a knoll on the west side

of Centre Block. It is there still, a constant reminder of Canada’s

monarchist attachments.


Long to reign over us

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

If statues could talk, the regal figurestanding on Parliament Hill couldspeak volumes about Ottawa’s tiesto British royalty.

In 1857, Queen Victoria ended sev-eral years of acrimony among colonialCanadians by selecting Ottawa as thenew capital of the united Province ofCanada. Many were appalled at theQueen’s choice. A British MP referredsarcastically to the town as “Westmin-ster in the wilderness.” An Americannewspaper was sardonic in its approval,opining that the “invaders would in-evitably be lost in the woods trying tofind it.”

Such skepticism was not unreasonable.

Ottawa was a brawling frontier town ofa few thousand. Its biggest claim to fame— apart from being a major source oflumber for the British navy — was itsmuddy streets. Still, 40 years later, Ot-tawa was a bit less muddy, and citizenswanted to show their appreciation forthe Queen’s decision. The year 1897marked the 60th year of Victoria’s reign,and a statue was proposed to mark theoccasion.

Duly sculpted by Louis-PhilippeHébert, it was unveiled in 1901 with muchpomp and ceremony on a knoll on thewest side of the Centre Block, home to theHouse of Commons and the Senate. It isthere still, on a granite pedestal surround-ed by trees, benches and pathways, a con-stant reminder of Canada’s monarchist at-

tachments. Today’s walk is devoted to these at-

tachments of Crown and city, at least asrepresented on Parliament Hill. The Hillcontains three monuments commemo-rating the royal presence — the statue ofQueen Victoria, one of Queen ElizabethII, and, sadly neglected, a block of mar-ble that was the cornerstone of the origi-nal Parliament Building.

I park myself on a bench to admireQueen Victoria, resplendent in crown,sceptre and robes of state, her head heldhigh as she gazes across the city sheplucked from obscurity. On the pedestalbelow the Queen stands a large muscularlion, a “vigilant guardian of the flag, ter-ritorial dominion and national honours,”as Hébert put it at the time.

2

A young jogger stops to rest on a near-by bench, checking the pulse in her neckwith her fingers. A middle-aged Chinesecouple, cameras dangling around theirnecks, walk up one of the paths. Theytake pictures of each other in front of themonument, and spend a few momentslooking up at the Queen.

Perhaps they, like myself, admireHébert’s handiwork: the intricate realismof the creases and folds of the Queen’srobes, the fierce-faced lion with its clawsunsheathed.

There is a sad story about the lion. Af-ter it was unveiled, some Ottawans of del-icate sensibility were upset at the realismwith which the king of beasts was por-trayed. A sensitive bureaucrat orderedthe alteration of offending parts. Alongcame a welder to render the lion anatom-ically corrected.

Next to the sopranoed lion is thedraped figure of a young woman, an alle-

gorical symbol of Canada. She’s dressedin peasant-like clothing with a gorget ofarmour around her neck. On her head is amural crown with the coats of arms ofthe provinces.

The woman seems unbalanced on herfeet. She looks up at the Queen, her rightarm extended to place a laurel wreath atthe royal feet, her left arm extended be-hind as if to keep her balance. I see whatthe authors of a 1986 National CapitalCommission brochure on the ParliamentHill statues meant when they wrote:“Wind-blown and unsteady, she is per-haps an emblem of a still uncertain na-tion.”

After saying goodbye to Queen Victo-ria, I troop along the driveway that curvesaround the back of the Centre Block tomy favourite “monument” on the Hill —a green-stained, weather-worn block ofwhite marble cut more than a century-and-a-half ago from a quarry along the

The statue of Queen Elizabeth II was first proposed in 1987 to mark both the

Queen's 40th year as Canada’s monarch and Canada's 125th year as a nation.

PHOTOS BY CHRIS MIKULA , THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

3

upper Ottawa River valley. It is the origi-nal cornerstone of Parliament, and, to mymind, a potent symbol of the city’s Britishheritage.

The first thread of that bond was wo-ven nearly 150 years ago when the Princeof Wales visited Ottawa.

It had been three years since theprince’s mother picked Ottawa to be thecapital. Her 19-year-old son, the futureKing Edward VII, was shipped over to ce-ment her decision. It was the first officialroyal visit to Canada.

Chiselled on the stone’s face: “This cor-nerstone of the building destined to re-ceive the Legislature of Canada was laidby Albert Edward Prince of Wales on thefirst day of September MDCCCLX” —Saturday, Sept. 1, 1860, to be precise. Someof the lettering has worn away.

The next major royal visit wasn’t until1901, when the Duke and Duchess ofCornwall and York — later King GeorgeV and Queen Mary — came to town. Ot-tawa’s 60,000 citizens pulled out all thestops, with at least half the city’s popu-lace gathering on Parliament Hill on Sept.21 to cheer as the duke unveiled the statueof Queen Victoria, who had died in Janu-ary of that year.

Fifteen years later, on the “first day ofSeptember MDCCCCXVI (Sept. 1, 1916),”as an additional inscription relates,Prince Arthur, the Duke of Connaughtand the then governor general of Canada,

rededicated the cornerstone for the newParliament building that was built afterthe original structure burned to theground earlier in the year — the samestone his brother Edward had laid 56years earlier.

It’s a short stroll from the cornerstoneto the northeast lawn between the Cen-tre Block and the East Block where I findthe statue of Queen Elizabeth II on horse-back. I take a seat on a bench in the shadeof a large maple to study the monumentas I flip through my research notes.

Here are a few facts: The bronze statueis four metres tall and 11⁄2 times largerthan life. It weighs 1,225 kilograms. It sitson a granite base that is 3.7 metres high,

4.3 metres long and 1.5 metres wide. Itcost $600,000. And, finally, it’s only thesecond statue of a monarch memorial-ized on Parliament Hill — compared to 15politicians — and, apparently, is the firstequestrian statue anywhere of HerMajesty.

British Columbia artist Jack Harmanand his son Stephen sculpted the monu-ment of the Queen astride the RCMPhorse Centenial — a gift to Her Majestyto mark the Mounties’ centennial in 1973.(The only reason I could find for thehorse’s name being deliberately mis-spelled — one “n” instead of two — wasso neither horse nor Queen would be as-sociated with 100 years ago, or some suchbureaucratic silliness.)

There is a stillness to the monument, akind of quiet and timeless solidity. Yet, atthe same time, it possesses a dynamicquality, a sense of movement. The Queenholds the reins loosely but firmly. Thehorse’s right foreleg is raised as if movingforward. There’s a playful swish in thethick tail. I can pick out the details of acrown and shield on the saddle straps andharness and the buttons on the Queen’scape with their royal insignia. She looks,well, regal and commanding, gazing intothe distance.

The statue was first proposed in 1987by Bill Tupper, the former Tory MP forNepean-Carleton, to mark both theQueen’s 40th year as Canada’s monarchand Canada’s 125th year as a nation. Sur-prisingly, perhaps, Tupper’s private mem-ber’s bill passed unanimously in theHouse of Commons and Senate. Ofcourse, there were a few carpers — closetrepublicans, no doubt — who, in thewords of one curmudgeonly cynic,thought the statue was “really useless.” ANew Democratic MP, Rod Laporte, as-sumed he was speaking for ordinaryCanadians when he was quoted as saying,“It’s fine to have a statue of the Queen. Ithas some value but, with the economiccondition of the country, it’s poor timing.”

I prefer the attitude of former York-Simcoe Tory MP John Cole, who defend-ed the statue’s symbolic value. “There is alot of tradition here,” he said. It seemsmost Ottawans agreed. Thousands gath-ered on Parliament Hill on June 30, 1992,to cheer the Queen as she tugged on alanyard to unveil the statue.

I like the idea that this monument ofQueen Elizabeth, like that of her great-great-grandmother on the other side ofthe Hill, will be here long after our con-temporary concerns — billions bailingout bankrupt car companies, for instance— have been forgotten, reminding us ofour more meaningful connections.


Citizen.

The cornerstone of Parliament: In chiselled letters worn by time: ‘Laid by Albert

Edward Prince of Wales on the first day of September MDCCCLX.’



Hail to The Chief

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

The scowling brow, the heavyjowls, the fierce gaze — such avisage could only be that ofJohn George Diefenbaker, thethirteenth prime minister of

Canada. Staring up at his Parliament Hillstatue, a dim boyhood memory returns.

It was July of 1961, as I recall, andDiefenbaker was visiting Inuvik, N.W.T.,where my family lived at the time. My fa-ther and other townspeople had gath-ered to watch Diefenbaker unveil a mon-ument marking the town’s founding fiveyears earlier. Years later I would learnthe prime minister spoke of the need fora new national vision, but at the time itbecame part of our family lore thatDiefenbaker had stopped to shake my fa-ther’s hand when he walked through thecrowd after the unveiling.

Today, near 50 years later, it seems ap-

propriate to begin my tour of ParliamentHill’s monuments with The Chief. Lo-cated on the northwest corner of the Hillbetween the Centre Block, which housesthe House of Commons and the Senate,and the West Block, Diefenbaker is oneof seven former prime ministers and fiveFathers of Confederation commemorat-ed on the Hill.

Diefenbaker, I suspect, would bepleased with his statue although I doubthe’d appreciate its location. Sculptor LeoMol depicts Diefenbaker in a double-breasted suit, standing confident and de-termined. His right hand holds the Bill ofRights, the document he produced in1960. There’s a fierce look in his eyes, asif he’s about to re-engage the Great Flagdebate of 1964 and give the Liberals an-other rhetorical thrashing for undermin-ing Canada’s British heritage.

I’d read that some thought had beengiven to locating Diefenbaker’s statue

next to that of Queen Victoria’s monu-ment, a fitting spot for a staunch monar-chist. Instead, he was located downhillfrom the Queen.

Lester Pearson’s statue, unveiled in1990, got the right-hand spot, a hundredmetres or so behind and above Diefen-baker’s.

Danek Mozdzenski’s bronze of Pear-son, the prime minister from 1963 to1968, has him sitting cross-legged in achair, looking neat and natty in a suit and— Pearson’s sartorial trademark — abowtie. I think he looks a tad arrogant atbeing able to look down on his old rival.But maybe that’s just partisan prejudiceon my part. I try to be inclusive, remem-bering Pearson’s legacy: national healthcare, the pension plan and the MapleLeaf flag. The first two, OK, but I’ll neverforgive him for replacing the Red Ensignwith the Liberal party’s colours, other-wise known as the Maple Leaf flag.

John George Diefenbaker, the thirteenth prime minister of Canada. Staring up at his Parliament Hill statue, a dim boyhood

memory returns.

On Parliament Hill: Nation-builders and a parade of prime ministers

I whack my knuckle on the toe of Pear-son’s over-sized brogue as I leave. Itmakes a hollow sound.

■

Walking toward to the Centre Block,past Queen Victoria’s statue, I follow theshort driveway that curves behind thebuilding. A chain of statuary lines theroad — some of Canada’s founders.

There’s George-Etienne Cartier, thefrancophone Father of Confederation,who was largely responsible for bringingQuebec into the federation. His statuewas the first on the Hill in 1885. Sculptedby Louis-Philippe Hébert, who also didthe Queen Victoria statue, it depictsCartier giving a public speech. Next tohim is a lectern draped with a scrollshowing: “Constitution of 1867. Le Gou-vernement est d’opinion que la Confédera-tion est nécessaire.”

A few metres along the driveway, I findAlexander Mackenzie, the first Liberalprime minister, who held office from1873 to 1878. A sober and upright man, it

seems. The allegorical figure of Probitysits at the base of the monument. Sheholds her right hand over her heart whilea shield next to her is engraved withwords you’re not likely to see on thetombstone of a modern-day politician:“Duty was his Law and Conscience hisRuler.”

The third statue, again only a short dis-tance along the driveway, is of GeorgeBrown. As the editor of the TorontoGlobe, he campaigned for Confederationin 1867. But in 1880, an employee he’dfired shot Brown outside his office. Thestatue depicts Brown as an aggressivedebater. Below on the pedestal is the alle-gorical figure of a husky young man pro-tecting a ballot box inscribed with thewords: “Government by the people, freeinstitutions, religious liberty and equality,and unity and progress of Confedera-tion.”

Thomas D’Arcy McGee is Canada’sonly political assassination to date. Agifted orator, journalist and poet, theIrishman came to Canada in 1857 and be-

came a passionate advocate of Confed-eration. During the 1860s, he spoke outagainst the Fenians, a group of IrishAmericans who wanted the UnitedStates to invade Canada. His hostilitymay have led to his assassination outsidehis Sparks Street residence on April 7,1868. McGee’s statue, erected in 1922,shows him in “the employment of his or-atory in the cause of Confederation,” assculptor George William Hill put it.

The monument memorializingRobert Baldwin and Louis-HippolyteLafontaine also depicts a conversation.The two political reformers sought re-sponsible government for Lower andUpper Canada in the years before Con-federation. The monument, by sculptorWalter Seymour Allward — who also de-signed the Vimy Ridge Memorial inFrance — was erected in 1914, and showsthem in a quiet colloquy, perhaps, as au-thor Terry Guernsey writes in Statues onParliament Hill, “discussing one of thedocuments on responsible government.”

■


The Women are Persons “tea party” monument honours five women who challenged the Supreme Court.

2

I take my lunch with John A. Mac-donald, Canada’s first prime minister,sitting in the shade of a maple tree nearhis statue on the northeast corner of theHill, between the Centre Block and theEast Block. It’s an appropriate spot — hisConfederation colleague, George-Eti-enne Cartier, stands on the opposite sideof the Hill.

Within four years of Macdonald’sdeath in 1891, public monuments hadbeen erected in five Canadian cities, aswell as in London, England. It wasn’t un-til Dominion Day, July 1, 1895, that Mac-donald’s statue was unveiled in the na-tion’s capital.

It is a splendid statue, capturing Mac-donald’s spiritedness and quickness ofmind. The sculptor, Louis-PhilippeHébert, depicts him in a meditative pose,papers in one hand, glasses in another,head turned to one side as if paused inthought. Perhaps he’s wonderingwhether Confederation will work for anylength of time. At his feet lies a pile ofparchment with the words “Consolida-tion of British North America.”

The statue of William Lyon Macken-zie King, who served as prime ministerfor 22 years — 1921-1926, 1926-1930, and1935-1948 — is nearby. Lunch done, Iwander over.

King may have acquired a reputationas a bland and colourless politician, butsculptor Raoul Hunter, in deciding howto portray King’s lengthy career, chose“to emphasize King’s forcefulness ofcharacter,” writes Guernsey. Hunter’sstatue shows King in a stiff, armour-likeovercoat, with a suffer-no-fools look onhis face. Considering how long King sur-vived — and thrived — in public life, thatis probably an accurate psychologicalportrait, at least to some degree.

Still, it seems to me other aspects ofthe man’s character were forgotten. Kingmay have appeared diffident in public, asbiographers claim, but he was also thekind of man who laid 10 white roses atthe Sir Galahad monument to his friendHenry Harper before entering the Houseof Commons to deliver his maidenspeech. Hunter’s statue, unveiled in 1967,captures none of this inner spirit in cast-ing King in a tight-buttoned pose. He

looks more belligerent than forceful. Oddly enough, you can see a more

positive side of King’s character in themonument to the man he succeeded,Wilfrid Laurier, the prime ministerfrom 1896 to 1911. In 1922, King, as thenew Liberal prime minister, approved astatue of his predecessor for ParliamentHill.

Five years later, in 1927, the 60th an-niversary of Confederation, Joseph-EmileBrunet’s elegant and dignified bronze ofLaurier — dressed in a tailored suit andovercoat — was unveiled on the south-east corner of the Parliament groundsoverlooking Confederation Square. It’s alovely statue, and well located. Thesmooth lines and hand-on-hip pose cap-ture Laurier’s courtly intelligence.

As Guernsey observes, King wantedLaurier’s statue to be what those ap-proaching Parliament first saw after ar-riving in the capital by train at Union Sta-tion (now the Government ConferenceCentre at Wellington Street and ColonelBy Drive). Besides, he’d promised thespot to Laurier during one of their regu-lar walks.

Leaving Laurier by the small eastern

gate, I turn right down Wellington Streettoward Bank Street. On the southwestside of West Block, where many of themembers of Parliament have their of-fices, I find my final prime ministerialstatue.

Robert Borden was prime ministerfrom 1911 to 1920, leading Canada throughthe First World War. His statue, unveiledin 1957, shows him in a greatcoat that re-calls the wartime years.

He stands firm and resolute — “thefighting pose,” sculptor Frances Loringcalled it. In his left hand, Borden holds ascroll representing the document he car-ried to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919,where — as historians say — Canada tookits place as a truly sovereign nation.

He also ensured the passage of theWomen’s Franchise Act, giving womenthe right to vote in federal elections.

Looking up at Borden’s craggy face, hereminds me of Diefenbaker, the rare kindof politician who delivered on his com-mitments, and whose hand you’d beproud to shake.

Robert Sibley is a senior writer for The

Citizen.

These persons ought to move down the street

There is also another “political” monument

on the Hill — the Women are Persons “Tea

Party” monument — that is, arguably, out of

place. The Persons monument, stuck

incongruously between the statues of Queen

Elizabeth II and Mackenzie King, honours the

five Alberta women — Irene Parlby, Louise

McKinney, Nellie McClung, Emily Murphy, and

Henrietta Muir Edwards — who, in 1929, won

a ruling from the British Privy Council, then

the highest court of appeal in the Empire, that

overturned an earlier silly decision of the

Supreme Court of Canada.

A year earlier, the Supreme Court had

ruled that women were not eligible to

Senate appointments because they were

not “qualified persons.” Surely the best

place for the Persons monument is the front

lawn of the Supreme Court, where it would

be a constant reminder to the Supremos to

keep their hubris in check.

As a side benefit, the statue of former

prime minister Louis St-Laurent, which

currently occupies a corner of the courthouse

lawn, could be moved to Parliament Hill,

where it rightfully belongs.

3



Long to be gazed upon

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

The afternoon of Nov. 1, 1888, wasunusually mild for Ottawa.While that might help accountfor the large crowd that gatheredin Major’s Hill Park that day,

most no doubt were there to witness aceremony that was a rarity at this pointin the city’s history.

At precisely 2:30 p.m., Lord Stanley ofPreston, the Governor General of Cana-da, unveiled a monument that had cap-tured the empathy and imagination ofOttawans when it was first proposed acouple of years earlier — the Sharp-shooters’ statue commemorating Pte.John Rogers and William Osgoode,members of the Governor General’s FootGuards killed at the Battle of Cut KnifeHill during the 1885 Riel Rebellion.

The statue — a guardsman standing inmournful repose with his hands claspedon the butt of a rifle — is no longer inMajor’s Hill Park. Today you find it, fit-tingly enough, in front of the CartierSquare Drill Hall, just off Queen Eliza-beth Driveway and Laurier Avenue. Thedrill hall is home to the Cameron High-landers of Ottawa and Foot Guards regi-ments.

Which is where I find myself at theend of another day stalking Ottawa’smonuments.

I’d spent the day pondering monu-ments along Elgin Street — from the bustof a South American hero in Minto Parkto the statuary in Confederation Parkand much in between.

The Sharpshooters’ memorial, sculpt-ed by Percy Wood, seemed a fitting placeto stop. I’d spent many evenings outside

the drill hall waiting for my son to con-clude an evening’s cadet training.

Studying the mournful soldier and thebronze medallion portraits of Rogers andOsgoode, I imagine that balmy day morethan 120 years ago, and what it mighthave meant for Ottawans.

A brochure published in 1889, titledCeremony of Unveiling, describes thepomp and circumstance.

“The fine weather and the unusualcharacter of the ceremony — happilyone almost unknown to Canadian histo-ry — attracted thousands of spectatorsto the spot … Spectators were massed infront, in rear, all around, and they gath-ered on every coign of vantage, not ex-cepting Parliament Hill, from which anexcellent view could be obtained … Thegay uniforms and glittering bayonets ofthe military lent animation to the scene.”

Portraits in bronze honour duty, loyalty and love of country

The National Aboriginal Veterans Monument memorializes native Canadians who fought in the First and Second World

Wars and the Korean War.

The style might seemflorid, but it’s the sentimentwe probably find moststrange. Words such as du-ty, loyalty and love of coun-try fill the speeches, with-out self-consciousness,much less irony.

Adolphe Caron, the min-ister of militia, was ap-plauded when he said, “Letevery Canadian rememberthat when her sons do theirduty, Canada will placethem in the list of heroeswho have won a right tomonuments, and whosememory deserves to begratefully cherished bythose who sincerely lovetheir country.”

So, too, was the governorgeneral.

“The memorial to thesemen will stand up here topublic view, long to begazed upon I hope, withfeelings of respect. It repre-sents those who cheerfullycame forward in the serviceof their country, who wereloyal to their Queen, true totheir colours, and ‘faithfuleven unto death’.”

I imagine similar senti-ments apply in one degreeor another to many of themonuments and statues I’dencountered today.

There was the mutton-chopped bust of GeneralJosé de San Martin inMinto Park, the Argen-tinean who had, as the in-scription said, “ensured Ar-gentine independence” andthen “crossed the Andesand liberated Chile and Pe-ru.”

Heading for Confedera-tion Park, I detouredthrough City Hall to look atthe model of the OttawaFirefighters memorial —two firefighters in action,one with a hose and theother carrying a child —that is to be installed in Fes-tival Plaza, along LaurierAvenue adjacent to CityHall.

The walkway of Confed-eration Park takes in theNational Aboriginal Veter-ans Monument, its symbol-ic bear, wolf and soaring ea-

gle memorializing thethousands of native Cana-dians who fought in theFirst and Second WorldWars and the Korean War;the Polish Home Armymonument — a limestonetablet with a 26-nameplaque — honouring the“valiant Canadian airmenwho fell over Poland whileflying support missionsduring World War II;” theMonument to CanadianFallen, dedicated to the30,000 soldiers, sailors andairmen who served in Ko-rea between 1950 and 1957;and the South African WarMemorial, commemoratingthose who fought in theBoer War between 1899and 1902.

I read through the list ofBoer War dead — TrooperG. Bradley, Pte. E. DesLau-riers, Pte. W.J. Leslie, Sgt.W.H. Rea, to name a few —before finding a benchfrom which I could admiresculptor Hamilton Mac-Carthy’s statue. I liked thedetail — everything fromthe rifle with its fixed bay-onet and the putteeswrapped around the legs tothe mustachioed soldierholding his pith helmetaloft in exuberance at mili-tary victory.

The Liberal governmentof the day wouldn’t financea monument for the BoerWar soldiers becauseCanada was not an “offi-cial” participant. Instead,as the inscription reads, itwas paid for in penniesgathered by “30,000 chil-dren of Ottawa and adjoin-ing counties.”

Walking across LaurierAvenue to Cartier SquareDrill Hall and my last mon-ument of the day, it occursto me that you’d be vilifiednowadays for enlisting chil-dren in such a patriotic en-terprise, but that, perhaps,says more about our lack ofhistorical sensibility than itdoes about the militarismof our forefathers.

Robert Sibley is a senior

writer for the Citizen.


2

‘Let every Canadian

remember that when

her sons do their duty,

Canada will place them

in the list of heroes who

have won a right to

monuments,’ the

minister of militia said

at the 1888 unveiling of

the Sharpshooters’

statue.



Concrete reasoning

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

It’s with a sense of relief that I take abreak in the west courtyard in frontof City Hall. After the noise andnoxiousness of Elgin Street, thecourtyard provides a zone of tran-

quility. It also offers a monument I like.David Ruben-Piqtoukun’s Lost Child

consists of sandstone blocks — one tallrectangular stone surrounded by short-er pieces — set in a bed of stone. Thepiece is intended to evoke the artist’s ex-perience as a child wandering lostamong the looming buildings of a city. AsRuben-Piqtoukun says on a plaque at-tached to the monument: “We have allbeen lost at some point in our lives.”

The sculpture, then, represents, in thewords of my handy National Capital

Commission brochure, the “triumphover the feeling of alienation in the ur-banized world.” The tallest stone sym-bolizes a “sentinel, its voice shining as itcalls out,” while the arrangement ofstones, like a traditional Inuit cairn,marks a spot where people can rest andre-orient themselves.

And so I do. I’d spent the morningalong Elgin Street, walking throughMinto Park and Confederation Park andaround City Hall in my continuing explo-ration of Ottawa’s monuments. I’d visit-ed Minto Park to see the sombre, grave-like stones of Enclave, the Women’s Mon-ument Against Violence. I’d studied theDorothy O’Connell Monument to Anti-poverty next to City Hill on Lisgar Street,puzzled at what looked to me like awarped doughnut in red stone.

To my mind, a statue shouldn’t tell you what to think

David Ruben-Piqtoukun’s Lost Child consists of sandstone blocks — one tall rectangular stone surrounded by shorter

pieces — set in a bed of stone. The piece is intended to evoke the artist’s experience as a child wandering lost among the

looming buildings of a city.

‘All human beings are born free and

equal in dignity and rights,’ reads the

Canadian Tribute to Human Rights

monument.

I’d admired the soldierly statuary inConfederation Park. Artist Laura Ford’sthree “Nature Girls” — Stump Girl, BushGirl and Conifer Girl — outside theBritish High Commission gave me alaugh.

But all along I knew I was avoiding theCanadian Tribute to Human Rights mon-ument near the Court House on the cor-ner of Elgin Street and Lisgar Avenue.The monument has irritated me eversince it was unveiled in 1990.

I’m not fond of abstract monuments,particularly ones that are supposed toappeal to the public. I prefer traditionalstatuary that reflects, even in an ideal-ized form, real human experience.

Some, of course, dislike “stiff brownbronze figures and didactic plaques,” asone pundit puts it. But the inclination toabstraction seems to me to betray an un-willingness to even attempt to makesense of the chaotic realities of the mod-ern era.

“The characteristic error of the mid-dle-class intellectual of modern times ishis tendency to abstractness and ab-soluteness, his reluctance to connectidea with fact, especially personal fact,”literary critic Lionel Trilling once stat-ed.

That is the fundamental fault of thismonument. Its abstract style disconnectsit from any historical particulars withwhich you can identify, while its appealto ideals of human rights allows banali-ty — does any reasonable person opposehuman rights? — disguised as profundity.Abstract works that indulge in blatantmoral exhortation are particularly pa-tronizing.

I approach Tribute from the front — orwhat I assume to be the front — walkingdown Elgin Street and across Laurier Av-enue.

A polished plaque of red Manitobagranite inscribed with a didactic state-ment (in English and French, naturelle-ment) confronts me: “All human beingsare born free and equal in dignity andrights.”

A fine sentiment, no doubt, but it stirsno instinctive emotional response unlike,say, the larger-than-life human figures onthe National War Memorial or a wall ofproper nouns like those at the Common-wealth Air Force Memorial on Green Is-land in Rideau Falls Park.

Beneath the granite plaque is a path-way between two rows of concretecolumns.

The artist’s intention, according toscholar John Roberts, was to reflect thebasilica-like interior of a church. Theaisle between the columns is “a repre-sentation of a path of redemption,” hewrites in a 1999 Carleton University

Master’s thesis, Nation-building andMonumentalization in the ContemporaryCapital.

Maybe so, but the rows of pillars re-mind me of a parking garage without aroof. Here and there rectangular plac-ards hang on the concrete slabs that formthe monument’s walls. They offer moreabstractions — “Rights,” “Dignity,”Equality.” Not that I could read any ofthem; they were all in various aboriginallanguages. I wonder how many of thosewho visited the monument knew nativelanguages, including aboriginals them-selves.

I doubt my reaction is what was in-tended when the monument was pro-posed in the 1980s.

In the words of a booklet published atthe time: Tribute “will remind our lead-ers, sensitize our visitors, and teach ourchildren that human rights are the cor-ner-stone of human community and thatuntil the rights of all are respected noneare secure.”

Another nice sentiment, but instead ofeliciting an emotional response, themonument tells you what you’re sup-posed to think.

There’s nothing human with which toconnect, nothing visual that might en-gender identification. Don’t get mewrong. I don’t quarrel with the ideals themonument expresses, but the way inwhich they are expressed.

The monument was inspired by theSolidarity labour movement in Poland inthe early 1980s. But other proponents, in-cluding gays and lesbians, aboriginals,francophones and women’s groups,pushed for a more “universal commem-oration.”

As John Roberts explains, the monu-ment’s creation was based on the belief“that public art can make a statementand play a role in mobilizing citizens toawareness and action.”

The problem, Roberts acknowledges,is that while the monument might serveas “a place for collective focus and dis-sent in the struggle for rights,” there’snothing that relates to specific events ormeanings with which people can identi-ty. Indeed, you need the explanations onnearby plaques to make Tribute accessi-ble. Otherwise you need a degree inmodern art. Traditional monumentsmight have information plaques, but theyusually don’t need to explain what you’resupposed to feel or think.

The monument’s creator, MelvinCharney, intended his aisle of pillars tobe “a path (that) traces a symbolic pro-cession through a portal inscribed withthe words of the UN Universal Declara-tion of Human Rights.”

Maybe so, but the UN document was

a response to the Holocaust and the hor-rors of the Nazi era. A Canadian diplo-mat, John Humphrey, authored that dec-laration. Tribute on its own makes no ref-erence to this historical connection be-tween Canada and the cause of humanrights. Instead, the visitor is exhorted toendorse abstract concepts.

Thus, despite its universal message ofhuman rights, Tribute lacks a represen-tative or figurative context that wouldfoster an emotional connection to itsmessage.

In Roberts’ words, “Tribute will only beattractive to a certain number of people”because its abstract form “lacks the suf-ficient bite needed to rouse (people)about the issues that it alludes to.”

I guess that doesn’t include me. Still, Itry to find something positive. I make myown procession back and forth betweenthe pillars. Nothing. The concrete is coldand dead to the touch. The only reactionI get is from a bum — sorry, homelessperson — huddled against one of thecolumns. Cigarette butts and the detritusof a McDonald’s meal surround him.

“Something bothering you?” he asks. “Just studying the monument,” I say.

“Don’t mind me.” But clearly I’m intruding. With one last

circle, I depart — after all, he has hisrights — and make my way to the court-yard, where I find a table next to Ruben-Piqtoukun’s Lost Child.

Why do I like this abstract piece andnot the other? It reminds me of Zen rockgardens in Japan. The conflation of stone,geometry and setting induces contem-plation and reflection. But somethingelse, too. On impulse I walk to the monu-ment and rub a hand across the lichen-flecked surface of the largest stone. Thesandstone feels warm, almost alive.


Citizen.

2

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

Islot a toonie in the outstretchedpalm, glancing up and downWellington Street to check if any-one is watching. There is no partic-ular reason to feel self-conscious,

but I do. I don’t usually give money tostatues.

This one, however, elicits such a re-sponse. Timothy Schmalz’s statue sitscrossed-legged on the corner of Kentand Wellington streets, half-hiddenamong the tulips and daffodils that fillthe planters in front of St. Andrew’s Pres-byterian Church.

Perhaps half-hidden is the wrongword. The statue, entitled Whatsoever ...,is quite visible, but it surprises me. I’vewalked passed the old church manytimes, but for the life of me I couldn’t re-call noticing the hooded beggar. I guess Iwasn’t paying attention.

Statues are like that. We create them,plop them in some spot, and then forgetthem. It’s not that we no longer “see”them, but rather, we no longer pay atten-tion. They become a visual version ofwhite noise, an unconscious backdrop toour lives.

This notion has been with me allmorning as I explore some of the monu-ments in and around Wellington Street.Think of Wellington and, no doubt, youvisualize all those grand buildings — theSupreme Court, the Bank of Canada, theold Justice Building, the ConfederationBuilding.

But there are other aspects to Welling-ton — sombre, inspirational and whim-sical — that you may not consider untilyou pay attention to, and rediscover, itsvarious monuments.

As I walked, I kept encountering ob-jects — statues, monuments and plaques— I know I’ve seen before. For some rea-son, though, I felt like I was seeing themfor the first time.

My sense of discovery began with TheSecret Bench of Knowledge on the terracein front of the National Library andArchives on Wellington Street, where Itook a morning coffee.

Artist Lea Vivot’s sculpture of a boyand a girl on a bench has been theresince 1993. It is a lovely, whimsical piece.The boy, with a bitten apple in his hand,

whispers sweet nothings in the girl’s ear,a reversal, I presume, of the Biblical storyof Eve tempting Adam.

I’ve seen the sculpture many times, ofcourse, but sipping my coffee beside theyoung lovers, I noticed the dozens ofhandwritten messages inscribed on thebench. Some of the signatures are thoseof well-known people — writer W.P. Kin-sella and poet George Elliott Clarke, forexample — but the sentiments of chil-dren are the most appealing. “I lovehockey, books, and I like to read in bed,”says eight-year-old Nicholas Defazio. “Ilike books because you can use yourimagination,” says Carol Ramsey, alsoeight.

Ditto for statues, I said to myself as Ipacked up my thermos and crossedWellington, heading for another “un-seen” sculpture.

The Canadian Phalanx was created af-ter the First World War to honour Cana-da’s war veterans. It occupies an islandin the middle of Lyon Street, just offWellington, under the Memorial Archlinking the east and west MemorialBuildings.

I suspect it is one of Ottawa’s more ig-nored — or, better, unattended — monu-ments because of its location, hemmedin as it is by traffic lanes on each side.I’ve driven by it regularly, but today wasthe first time I really looked at it.



Paying attentionWhimsy, surprises and moments of reflection on Wellington Street

On the corner of Kent and Wellington sits Timothy Schmalz’s statue,

Whatsoever

Sculptor Ivan Mestrovic’s marble re-lief, unveiled in 1920, depicts a disci-plined line of soldiers with rifles loweredand bayonets fixed. Set inside a granitearchitectural frame by AleksanderTopolski, the work possesses all the dra-ma and tension of charging soldiers de-termined to achieve their objective.

Back on Wellington, I strolled towardParliament Hill, thinking to find anothercoffee. Instead, I find this figure in frontof St. Andrew’s. Wrapped in a blanket,head bowed and hidden, the begging fig-ure is startling. I see nothing of the faceuntil I bend to its level, and realize I’mlooking into the bearded face of Christ.A nearby plaque in the tulip bed quotes apassage from the Bible, Matthew 25:40 —“Truly, whatever you did for one of theleast of these my brothers and sisters,you do for me.” Only as I’m about toleave do I notice the “wound” in the up-turned hand protruding from beneaththe blanket. The purpose is obvious, andbefore I leave I pull a coin from my pock-et.

Walking past the Bank of Canada, Ipause to study the seven bronze plaques— all muscular nudes — that decoratethe bank’s neo-classical facade above thedoor. Phyllis Jacobine Jones’s allegoricalreliefs of men and women were commis-sioned in 1937, and represent Canada’sprimary industries of fishing, electricity,mining, agriculture, forestry, manufac-turing and construction (remember thiswas before NAFTA).

I cross the street, strolling around theold Justice Building to admire the carv-ing of a musket-toting voyageur infringed buckskin set high on the wall onthe corner of Kent and Wellingtonstreets, and the feathered Indian abovethe door on the west-facing façade.

I follow the curving driveway past thedoors of the Supreme Court to pay myrespects to Louis St-Laurent, the primeminister from 1948 to 1957. His lonelystatue, unveiled in 1976, occupies a cor-ner of the big rectangle of lawn in frontof the court. Sculptor Elek Imredy de-picts St-Laurent seated in a suit andgown and facing the Supreme Courtwhere he pleaded numerous cases as alawyer before entering politics. I thinkhe’d look less lonely among the otherprime ministers on Parliament Hill, al-though he does have the companionshipof Veritas and Iustitia, Truth and Justice,the two statues that flank the courtdoors.

My last monument of the morning ison the terrace behind the National Li-

brary and Archives —it’s a splendid statue ofSir Arthur GeorgeDoughty, the Dominionarchivist from 1904 to1935.

The statue was pro-posed by former primeminister MackenzieKing in 1937, and begunby Robert Tait McKen-zie. It was finished byanother sculptor,Emanuel Hahn.

It is a handsomework, showing Doughtyseated in a scholarlygown, fountain pen inhis right hand poisedover a manuscript onhis lap. But it’sDoughty’s words on thepedestal that give thismonument its poignancy.

“Of all national assets, archives are themost precious: they are the gift of onegeneration to another and the extent ofour care of them marks the extent of ourcivilization.” I can’t think of a better ar-gument for attending to monuments.

I really need another coffee. I think ofreturning to The Secret Bench of Knowl-edge, but on impulse I walk back to St.Andrew’s.

I’m curious. The coin is gone. Someone was paying

attention. I hope they paused for a mo-ment’s refection before taking the mon-ey.

I drop another toonie into the wound-ed palm. I’ll have to forgo the coffee, Iguess.


Citizen.


The Secret Bench of Knowledge is inscribed with hand-written messages. Some

of the signatures are well known — W.P. Kinsella, George Elliott Clarke, for

starters. In other places, children have signed the sculpture.



Bravery and spirit, larger than life

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

I’ve never forgotten the first time Isaw the National War Memorial. Itwas the spring of 1976, and I’d re-turned to Canada after a couple ofyears travelling. During a stopover

in Ottawa, I walked along WellingtonStreet to Confederation Square, stoppingat the foot of the memorial.

Years later, in a 1995 essay for the Citi-zen, I wrote about that encounter. “Look-ing up at the green-stained soldiers, I re-membered during my travels in Europevisiting the Vimy Memorial in France,with the names of thousands of soldiersposted missing and presumed deadetched on its massive ramparts. I re-called standing on those ramparts, look-

ing out across the Douai plain and imag-ining those young men clawing their wayup a muddy slope under the hail of ene-my fire, and feeling — in hindsight, Iknow no other way of putting it — veryCanadian. Now, at this smaller memorialin Ottawa, I felt something similar.”

I am obviously more familiar with theWar Memorial, having lived in Ottawafor nearly 25 years. Unfortunately, famil-iarity tends to breed complacency. Themonument has become part of the back-ground of my everyday life. Today,though, as I continue to explore the na-tional capital’s monuments, I’d like to re-cover something of that first response.

The memorial has lost none of itssculptural impressiveness, I tell myself asI circle the huge pedestal. The Response,

as British sculptor Vernon March titledhis creation, was unveiled May 21, 1939,by King George VI. It was dedicated tothose who’d served and lost their lives inthe First World War from 1914 to 1918. Theaddition of other dates — the SecondWorld War between 1939 and 1945 andthe Korean War from 1950 to 1953 — hasmade the memorial a national symbol ofCanadian sacrifice in time of war.

Standing on the steps below the mon-ument, I study the larger-than-life fig-ures — 22 bronze men and women and ahorse hauling a field gun — plungingthrough the granite archway. Each charg-ing figure represents a branch of thearmed forces that served during theGreat War — infantry, artillery, navy, airforce, medical corps, nurses.

At the National War Memorial, 22 bronze men and women remind us of Canadians who built this nation

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.

The figures are historically accurate interms of uniforms and equipment —everything from a kilted soldier carryinga Vickers machine-gun to a cavalrymanon horseback pulling an 18-pound fieldgun.

The allegorical winged figures on topof the arch bring “the blessings of Victo-ry, Peace and Liberty in the footsteps ofthe people’s heroism and self-sacrifice(as) they are passing through the arch-way below,” Col. John Gardam wrote ina 1982 Veterans Affairs publication, TheNational War Memorial.

Or, as King George put it 70 years ago:“Not by chance both the crowning fig-ures of peace and freedom stand side byside. Peace and Freedom cannot be longseparated … without freedom there canbe no enduring peace, and without peaceno enduring freedom.”

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier atthe base of the War Memorial adds to thesymbolic significance of the monument.The tomb, placed in ConfederationSquare in 2000, contains the remains of aCanadian soldier who died during theFirst World War. Sculptor Mary-AnnLiu’s bronze sword and helmet adornsthe sarcophagus, reminding me of theburial vaults of medieval knights in Eng-lish cathedrals.

Walking around the monuments Ithink of how hundreds gather here everyRemembrance Day. The crowds seem toget bigger each year, as though the needto remember becomes ever greater asthe veterans disappear into history.

It is this need to remember that cre-ates monuments, scholars say.

Nations forge an identity between theindividual and the community by build-ing symbolic objects such as monu-ments that embed in the individual con-sciousness an awareness of significantcommunal events and experiences thatwould otherwise be forgotten with thepassage of time.

That’s certainly the deep purpose ofthe National War Memorial, says schol-ar Susan Phillips-Desroches in a 2002essay.

Vernon March’s monument sought“to symbolically represent the people ofCanada through this group of men andwomen who went overseas to fight inthe Great War … and to record their ac-tions for future generations.” Those fig-ures beneath the arch symbolize “thegoing forth of the nation; a symbolicbirth of a triumphant people.” In thislight, the War Memorial should be seenas both a memorial to the fallen and as anation-building project.

Prime Minister Mackenzie King firstproposed the War Memorial in 1923, andtook considerable interest in its design,

says Phillips-Desroches. “King attempted to establish a ‘foun-

dational myth’ that would see Canadiansthrough the difficult transition from awar-time to a peace-time society andeconomy and realize the sacrifices madeby the men and women had a positiveoutcome for the nation,” she writes inher Carleton University master’s thesis,Canada’s National War Memorial: Re-flection of the Past or Liberal Dream?“The icon chosen to deliver King’s mes-sage of the emergent nation was the im-age of the Great War soldier, whose brav-ery and spirit had brought the countrytogether.”

I run my hand along the smooth sur-face of the soldier’s tomb, rememberinguncles who fought in the Second WorldWar, and recalling Remembrance Dayceremonies I’ve seen over the years.

I turn to look down Elgin Street, con-juring the crowds, the faltering ranks of

aging veterans and, after them, thefirmer lines of serving soldiers.

And then I see my son marching withthe rest of his Cameron Highlanderscadet troop.

And for a moment all those memories— a long-ago visit to Vimy Ridge, aspringtime in Ottawa, a RemembranceDay parade a decade ago — converge tomake me feel, well, strangely Canadian.

Robert Sibley is a senior writer

for the Citizen.

Sculptor Mary-Ann Liu’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier contains the remains of a

Canadian soldier who died during the First World War.

2



Life-sized heroes at eye level

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

When the Valiants Memorial was un-veiled in 2006, I wasn’t impressed. I tendto like my statues larger than life. Butover the years I’ve changed my mind.

Today, as I continue my meanderingtour of the national capital’s monuments,I try to figure out why I’ve developed anaffectionate regard for the statues andbusts that form this commemoration atthe top of Elgin Street in ConfederationSquare.

The grouping — five life-sized statuesand nine busts on the northeast cornerof the square near the National WarMemorial — are set at a height that al-lows passing pedestrians to view them at

eye level. This was the source of my am-bivalence.

It seemed to me the eye-level staturemade these heroes’ statues less monu-mental, less heroic.

A non-Valiant statue — that of Brig. An-drew Hamilton Gault, across the road atthe top of Elgin Street just north of theNational Arts Centre — is more to my lik-ing. Gault, a Boer War veteran and awealthy Montreal industrialist, foundedthe Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light In-fantry in Ottawa in 1914. The monument,unveiled in 1992, shows him in a heroicpose, with medals across his uniformedchest and a sword across his right shoul-der. He looks like he’s about to lead acharge across No Man’s Land. (In fact,

Gault was wounded three times and lost aleg during the First World War.) Even theinscription on the monument invokes theman’s larger-than-life qualities: “His lifewas an example of devoted service toCanada in war and peace.”

The Valiants Memorial, by contrast,eschews such words as “heroism,” “du-ty” and “service.” The only reference tohistorical sentiment is a phrase from TheAeneid by Virgil — Nulla dies umquammemori vos eximet aevo; No day will evererase you from the memory of time” —engraved on a bronze wall at the base ofSappers Stairway.

As for the statues themselves, theirheight and placement renders them,well, ordinary.

Street-level statues salute ordinary courage in extraordinary times

The Valiants in Confederation Square are set at a height that encourages passersby to identify with the sculptures.

Yet, there is something irreducibly ap-pealing about these figures by sculptorsMarlene Hilton Moore and John Mc-Ewen. And so I circle them, admiring theperiod details of uniform and dress andstudying the faces.

There’s Lt.-Col. Charles-Micheld’Irumberry de Salaberry with hissword, cockade hat and wide-cuffed coat.He and his Voltigeurs Canadiens defeat-ed a U.S. force in 1813, helping save LowerCanada from invasion. Pierre Le Moyned’Iberville, a war hero from the NewFrance era who defeated British in-vaders, is also here in all his splendid re-galia. So is Laura Secord, a heroine of the

War of 1812, who struggled alone acrossmiles of dense bush to warn Britishforces of an impending American attack.She looks like a character out of one ofthose period movies taken from a JaneAusten novel.

Then there’s Gen. Arthur Currie, thefirst commander of the Canadian Corpsduring the First World War, the man whomasterminded the Canadian victory atVimy Ridge. And last, but certainly notleast, there’s the hero of another war —

Mohawk chief Thayendanegea, betterknown as Joseph Brant, who led theIroquois in support of the British causeduring the American Revolution.

The life-sized, head-to-torso busts in-clude: Louis De Buade, Comte de Fron-tenac of New France; Loyalist soldier Lt.-Col. John Butler; Gen. Isaac Brock of theWar of 1812; First World War army nurseGeorgina Pope and soldier Cpl.Joseph Kaeble; and from theSecond World War, Capt.John Wallace Thomas,Maj. Paul Triquet, Lieut.Hampton Gray and PilotOfficer Andrew Mynarski.

I spend most of my timewith Robert Hampton Gray,the last Canadian to die in theSecond World War, as well thelast Canadian awarded the Vic-toria Cross for his heroic actions.I once wrote an article aboutGray, who was born Nov. 2, 1917,in Trail, B.C.

On Aug. 9, 1945, Gray, a RoyalCanadian Navy Volunteer Re-serve pilot aboard a British air-craft carrier, led his Corsair flightin an attack on a flotilla of Japan-ese warships at anchor in Ona-gawa Bay on the Honshu coast. As flightleader, he took the brunt of anti-aircraftfire, but held his course until he releasedhis bomb, sinking an enemy warship. Sec-onds later, Gray crashed into the water.He was 27. Five days later, after the atomicbombings of Nagaski and Hiroshima,Japan surrendered and the Second WorldWar was over. Three months later, Graywas posthumously awarded the VictoriaCross, the British Commonwealth’s high-est honour for valour.

I stare at Gray’s sculpted face. He looksso young. How did he do what he did?What are the qualities of character thatallow a man to perceive a cause greaterthan himself and knowingly and willing-

ly go to his deathin the service ofthat cause? My reverie is in-

terrupted by a loudand rambunctiousgaggle of school kidson a class trip. They

look to be in juniorhigh. They cluster

around thestatuesa n db u s t s ,touch-ing the

Valiants’b r o n z e

clothing asthough they

might feel itstexture. The

girls read theplaques toeach other.The biggerboys set them-selves besidethe statues tosee who istaller. One wit

gives Laura Secord a kiss.They may not be taking the statues se-

riously — why should they at their age?— but watching them I understand whatmakes the Valiants appealing.

They are of a size that speaks to you,figuratively speaking.

The eye-level contact allows you toidentify with these heroes, to imaginethat if they could speak, they might tellyou their courage was quite ordinary,and that you, too, might act as they didin similar circumstances.

They are us, at our best.


Citizen.

I stare at Gray’s sculpted

face. He looks so young.

How did he

do what he did?



In search of Canada’s warrior spirit

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

Canadians are often told Canadalacks a martial spirit. We arepeacekeepers, not warriors. Yet,all day as I continue my searchfor Ottawa’s monuments, I’ve

seen evidence to the contrary.Take, for example, the Canloan Memo-

rial. The triangular stone cenotaph is, ar-guably, one of the more obscure warmemorials in Ottawa.

It occupies a circular pad on the eastbank of the Rideau River, across SussexDrive from Rideau Falls Park, commem-orating the Canadian Army infantry of-ficers who served with British regimentsduring the Second World War.

By 1943, the British Army was runningshort of officers in its numerous cam-paigns around the world. The CanadianArmy, on the other hand, was fightingonly in Italy and had more officers thancould be deployed to active battalions.The Canadian government offered to“loan” junior officers to the British on avoluntary basis, under the code nameCANLOAN.

Nearly 700 volunteers stepped for-ward. Many took part in the invasion andliberation of Europe in 1944 and 1945. All told, the Canloan volunteers suffered75-per-cent casualties — 128 killed, 310wounded and 27 taken prisoner.

Most of the military monuments I’veseen while walking along Sussex Drive

reflect similar sacrifice. The National Artillery Memorial,

which was originally in Major’s Hill Parkbut relocated in 1959 to the west side ofRideau Falls Park on Green Island, hon-ours the “glorious memory of the offi-cers and men of the Royal Regiment ofCanada who gave their lives in the ser-vice of Canada.”

On the east side of the park, theMackenzie-Papineau Monument com-memorates the 1,546 Canadians whofought against the fascists during theSpanish Civil War between 1936 and1939.

Unveiled in 2001, it includes a longwall with the names of Mac-Pap volun-teers.

Heroic monuments, obscure memorials and geometric forms reflect a nation’s sacrifice

The Peacekeeping Monument is not a war memorial — it’s a monument to those who prevent war. Sculptor Jack Harman strikes a

good balance between warrior and peacekeeper.

The Commonwealth Air Force Memo-rial, unveiled in 1959, is nearby. It in-cludes a stylized bronze sculpture of theglobe and long walls with the names of809 men and women who lost their liveswhile serving or training in Common-wealth air forces operating from bases inCanada, the Caribbean and the UnitedStates. They have no known grave, orwere buried at crash sites that can’t bemaintained.

Walking the length of the walls, read-ing names at random — Pilot Officer F.J.Kruszynski, Royal Air Force; Flight Sgt.G.A. Soeder, Royal Canadian Air Force;R.K. Manttan, Pilot Officer, Royal Aus-tralian Air Force; 1943, Section OfficerIrene Watson, Royal Canadian Air Force— I’m struck by the difference in stylebetween these monuments and otherwar memorials such as the National WarMemorial and The Canadian Phalanx offWellington Street I’ve visited in recentdays.

The latter monuments are built inheroic proportion, with figurative stat-ues in martial poses. The ones I’m find-ing today, many unveiled in the 1950s and1960s, abandon heroic figures, and anyexplicit reference to heroism, in favourof granite and concrete walls, geometricforms, plaques and cairns.

Do these monuments reflect a con-scious effort to downplay the motif ofearlier eras so as not to glorify war or

promote a warriorspirit? The questionseems especiallyapplicable to thePeacekeeping Mon-ument at the inter-section of SussexDrive and St.Patrick Street.

The monument, entitled Reconcilia-tion, commemorates the more than100,000 members of the Canadian mili-tary who’ve served in peacekeepingmissions around the world. Unveiled in1992, it depicts three peacekeepers —two men and a woman — standingguard over the shattered remains of aforeign street.

I’ve long felt ambivalent about thismonument, uncertain whether it suc-ceeds in balancing the figurative (thosethree soldiers) and the abstract (thoseshattered walls) to achieve its symbolicpurpose. I sometimes think the fact on-ly one of the soldiers is armed suggestspassivity, as does their static posture.

But over the years I’ve been recon-ciled to Reconciliation. It is not a warmemorial; it’s a monument to thosewho prevent war. So, perhaps, the re-striction on warrior symbolism is ap-propriate. In my research I’d read thatthe monument’s co-sponsors, the De-partment of National Defence and theNational Capital Commission, weresometimes at loggerheads. The latterdidn’t want anything too warlike, whilethe former was not going to have its sol-diers portrayed as glorified baby-sitters.

The winning design by sculptor JackHarman strikes a good balance be-tween the warrior and the peacekeeper,achieving, as the monument jury put it,“the need for strength, action and com-

mand if one is to keep the peace.” You enter the monument along a path

between shell-broken walls symboliz-ing opposing sides in a conflict. Thepathway is littered with rubble, but itconverges at another wall on top ofwhich stand the three soldiers, watch-ing over a tentative peace. To the right,there’s a “sacred grove” of trees and agrassed area symbolizing hope.

Supposedly, this design satisfiedeveryone. As scholar John Roberts ex-plains in his 1999 Carleton UniversityM.A. thesis, Nation-Building and Mon-umentalization in the ContemporaryCapital, soldiers can identify with it be-cause it reflects their experience, whilethe public recognizes symbolic imagesfrom war-torn regions where Canadianpeacekeepers have served. While Rec-onciliation may not be a monument tothose who have fought in war, it is amonument to something that is cer-tainly worth commemorating — thosewho prevent war.

Yet, sitting against a willow tree over-hanging the Rideau River, studying theCanloan Memorial, I find I still preferold-fashioned monuments. I walk overto run my fingers across the plaqueswith their embossed names of the dead.True, there’s nothing glorifying warhere either, but there is an implicitrecognition of the warrior spirit and itsnecessity. The fallen, says the com-memoration, “are honoured in this qui-et place in gratitude and remembranceof the cost of liberty.”

Someone wedged a poppy in a crackin the stone. Maybe Canada’s warriorspirit is not forgotten.


Citizen.

The Canloan Memorial commemorates the Canadian

Army infantry officers who served with British regiments

during the Second World War.

A detail from the

Commonwealth Air

Force Memorial.

2



A river and its city

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

The view from Nepean Point is cer-tainly panoramic. Sheltering fromwind and rain against the statue ofSamuel de Champlain, I gaze up

the Ottawa River. On my left, the Rideau Canal and

above it, on a limestone bluff, the neo-gothic spires of the Parliament Buildings.On the right, there is the Museum of Civ-ilization and the highrises of Hull — orGatineau, as it is now called — and, inthe hazy distance, the blue line of theGatineau Hills. Ahead of me, the PortageBridge crosses the river and Victoria Is-

land rides like a green ship through thegrey water.

The point, I decide, provides the finestview of the capital region. Indeed, I needonly turn around to take in the embassiesand government buildings along SussexDrive, the glass domes of the NationalGallery, the silver spires of Notre DameBasilica, the green oasis of Major’s HillPark, the fairy-tale towers of the ChâteauLaurier and the hulking U.S. embassylooking like a landlocked aircraft carrier.

A fitting spot for beginning anotherday of exploring Ottawa’s monuments.From this promontory, you can’t help butwonder at the confluence of geography,

history and politics that produced thisnation’s capital. Social historian SandraGwyn’s lovely phrase comes to mind. Ot-tawa, she once wrote, is “an idea carvedout of the wilderness.”

Ignoring the rain like a true stalwartexplorer, I look up at Champlain, won-dering if he might have found the viewinspiring, and what he might think if hecould see the country he helped create.

The statue, unveiled in 1915 by theDuke of Connaught, shows the great ex-plorer with his right arm extended andan astrolabe in his hand, measuring theangular altitude of the sun, trying to fig-ure out his location.

On Nepean Point, a collision of history and geography

Standing beneath Champlain’s statue, I try to imagine the country he saw: Indian encampments along

the banks of the river, the thunderous rapids, the vaulting sky and the forests that seemed to stretch

away forever.And then I look around at the city that has come to pass.

It’s a work of fiction, so to speak, but notunwarranted as a symbolic statement. Sofar as I know, Champlain never actuallystood on this bluff, but he did pass by thepoint in June of 1613 on his way up river,searching for the passage that would leadto the riches of the Orient. SculptorHamilton MacCarthy’s stature com-memorates this first passage. Unfortu-nately, MacCarthy, unlike Champlain, didnot know how to use an astrolabe — thestatue holds it upside down.

I’m fond of history’s moments of syn-chronicity, to borrow psychologist CarlJung’s concept, so I rather like the storyof Champlain’s astrolabe. Surely it’s no coincidence Champlain lost the instru-ment on that 1613 journey while making a

portage a few kilometres south of Al-lumette Island, near Pembroke, and thatit was found, so the story goes, more than250 years later — in 1867 no less — by a14-year-old farm boy, Edward GeorgeLee. Fittingly, the astrolabe now residesacross the river in the Museum of Civi-lization.

Of course, Champlain wasn’t the onlyexplorer to travel the Ottawa River. Threeyears earlier, in 1610, another French ad-venturer, Etienne Brulé, ventured up theriver on the way to the Great Lakes. In 1615,the Recollet priest Joseph le Caron madeit across the Ottawa River’s rapids on hisway to Georgian Bay. But Champlain wasthe first to map the river and name itstopographical features.

His journals, as historian David Hack-ett Fischer recounts in his recently pub-lished biography, Champlain’s Dream,mark the confluence of the Gatineau andOttawa rivers and, farther south, RideauFalls pouring into the Ottawa and theridge of mountains we know as the Eard-ley Escarpment. He also remarks on theriver, describing it as “very beautiful andwide,” its banks covered with “fine openwoods.”

Standing beneath Champlain’s statue,I try to imagine the country he saw: In-dian encampments along the banks ofthe river, the thunderous rapids, thevaulting sky and the forests that seemedto stretch away forever. And then I lookaround at the city that has come to pass.

I am not the first to imaginatively weldpast to present and try to extract mean-ing from the collision of history and ge-ography.

Historian Donald Creighton capturedthe strange marvel of this meeting of timeand space in a poetic passage describingConfederation-era Ottawa. “Politics andgeography faced each other in an imme-diate and implacable confrontation. Tothe north and west lay the enormous ex-panse of rock and water, forest and plain,which made up the half-continent thatthe new Dominion of Canada had inherit-ed and hoped to occupy as its own. To thesouth stood the Parliament that must tryto bring this new nation into effective be-ing.”

The rain has let up. I take a final 360-degree look at the river and its city, and itcomes to me that the city itself is a kindof monument, “a set of ideas or orderand moderation and civility, realized inthe wilderness,” to borrow again fromSandra Gwyn.

I like to think Champlain, a visionary in his own right, saw some-thing similar.


for the Citizen.


Champlain’s statue, unveiled by the Duke of Connaught in 1915, shows the

explorer with an astrolabe, figuring out his location. Sculptor Hamilton

MacCarthy, unlike Champlain, did not know how to use an astrolabe — the

statue holds it upside down.

2


Sculptor Joseph-Emile Brunet’s statue of Col. By in Major Hill’s Park looking across the Rideau Canal at Parliment Hill.


A haunting monument to Col.By

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

Major’s Hill Park is a hauntingplace, if you let it. I don’t meanhaunting of the ghostly kind,but rather of the historicalimagination.

Leaning on the rail that runs along thecliff overlooking the Rideau Canal, it’seasy to imagine the canal’s commandingofficer, Lt.-Col. John By, standing herelong before this park existed — in, say,1830 — wondering how on earth he wasgoing to complete a project that histori-ans would come to regard as the engi-neer feat of the age.

No doubt, the British Army engineerhad a lot on his mind, but did he appreci-ate the view — the stone Commissariat(the oldest stone building in Ottawa, bythe by, and now the Bytown Museum) hebuilt in 1827 to serve as his office duringthe canal’s construction; the tree-cov-

ered limestone slopes of Barrack Hillwhere, a few decades later, a nation’s leg-islature would be built; and, best of all,the wide expanse of the Ottawa River?

He must have, I conclude during an af-ternoon poking around Major’s Hill Parkin my continuing exploration of Ottawa’smonuments. After all, he built a two-storey house for his wife and two daugh-ters on what became known as Colonel’sHill. (When Colonel By returned to Eng-land, Maj. Daniel Bolton succeeded him,and the hill was renamed Major’s Hill —hence, Major’s Hill Park.)

The house was, by all accounts, a finehome — an ornate cottage-style buildingsurrounded by English gardens and apasture. One British officer, Capt.Alexander, who served with Col. By, de-scribed the house as “tastefully orna-mented with rustic verandas and trelliswork.”

It also provided a fine view of the river.

“The house which stands in a good gar-den overlooks one of the most beautifulspots I have seen in this Country,”Frances Ramsay Simpson, the newlywed, 18-year-old wife of Hudson’s BayCompany Gov. George Simpson, wrotein her diary on May 4, 1830, after a break-fast visit with Mrs. By. “It commands anextensive view of the river, on the oppo-site side of which is the little village ofHull … From the upper storey are to beseen the fine and romantic Kettle(Chaudière) Falls, and beneath runs theRideau Canal.”

Sadly, the little house with a view wasdestroyed in a fire in 1848. Only thechimney remained standing. Happily, 125years later, in 1973, archeologists startedto poke around the site, exposing thestone foundations and unearthing long-buried household items — everythingfrom buttons and spoons to sugar bowlsand chamber pots.

Ground-level cairns commemorate little house with a view

Today, some of those items — a pipe, asugar bowl, a teapot, a serving spoon, awater pitcher, a chamber pot — are em-bedded as bronze reproductions in small,ground-level cairns around the cottagesite or etched figuratively into a plaqueattached to the remnant chimney. Theseobjects, along with the chimney andfoundation stones, provide a hauntingmonument to Col. By and his family.

To be sure, there is a less domesticmonument nearby honouring Col. By,who, in the six years from 1826 to 1832,pushed through construction of a projectlinking 320 kilometres of rivers and lakesbetween the Ottawa River and Lake On-tario. Sculptor Joseph-Emile Brunet’sstatue of Col. By overlooking the canal isappropriately heroic.

And so it should be. The canal put Ot-tawa on the map, or Bytown as it wascalled until 1855. Without the canal, it’sdoubtful Queen Victoria would havepicked the place in 1857 to be the capitalof the United Provinces of Upper andLower Canada. No wonder the monu-ment is inscribed with these words:“Overlooking his Rideau Canal, Lt.-Col.John By is commemorated here as thefounding father of Ottawa, Canada’s cap-ital.”

(Col. By is also honoured as the city’sfounder with a granite fountain in Con-federation Park. The fountain stood inTrafalgar Square in London for nearly acentury, from 1845 to 1939, and was givento Ottawa as a gift in 1955 by the NationalArt Collections Fund.)

Equally appropriate, a nearby plaquehonours Sir Edmund Walker Head, thecolonial administrator who, as governorgeneral of British North America be-tween 1854 and 1861, was instrumental inpersuading the Queen to choose Ottawaas the capital. As well, one interpretivewall offers a potted history of Ottawa,while another reveals the developmentof Major’s Hill Park from a plot of pas-ture into one of the city’s premier parks.

The only incongruity is the statue ofthe Anishinabe Scout in the northwestcorner of the park. The statue used to belocated on Nepean Point with Samuel deChamplain’s statue, but area aboriginalstook offence at what they regarded as thestatue’s subservient position in relationto the great white explorer. Not surpris-ingly, those in charge of deciding thesethings caved under the pressures of po-litical correctness. The scout was relo-cated to Major’s Hill Park, where he’seven more out of place. Planted in an ob-scure corner, the noble looking scoutlooks ignobly lost in the bush.

After wandering among these plaquesand statues, I return to the ruins and thecairns with their inlaid sugar bowls andteacups. Did Col. By puff on this pipe?Did Mrs. Simpson sip tea from this cup?Did Mrs. By wash her hands with waterfrom this pitcher?

Fanciful thoughts, perhaps, butcrouched on the remains of a wall, gaz-ing at the once-used crockery and the re-mains of the foundation, it’s not hard toconjure the cottage as it was, and see thetwo women strolling through the gardenafter breakfast that warm morning inMay. In my mind, I follow them as Mrs.By shows Mrs. Simpson through herhome, taking the just-arrived-from-Lon-don lady upstairs to enjoy the fine viewof the river.

That’s how history haunts you, if youlet it.


Citizen.


Sculptor Joseph-Emile Brunet’s statue of Col. By, above, is appropriately heroic.

But the ruins and fragments of By’s house, below left, evoke the era and hardship

of his task: Between 1826 and 1832, he pushed through construction of a project

linking 320 kilometres of rivers and lakes between the Ottawa River and Lake

Ontario. Below right: In an obscure corner of Major’s Hill Park, an Anishinabe

Scout looks ignobly lost.

2



From Rocket to spaceship

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

At first sight, the spaceship looks asthough it’s been abandoned onthe wrong planet. But after anhour staring at the thing while I

eat my lunch on the patio of the Théâtrede l’Île, a small oasis in the middle ofBrewery Creek in Gatineau, I change mymind.

Or, maybe it was the other wayaround: the spaceship changes mymind.

Sculptor Victor Tolgesy’s Explorer IIsits at the tip of the island. Its round andangular shapes — made of corten steel,the same metal used to make warships— evoke images of distance places. Con-

sidering its origins, that’s appropriate. Asthe plaque explains, the sculpture wascreated more that 40 years ago whenmankind was imagining a future amongthe stars. In fact, this sculpture is a small-er version of Explorer I, which was com-missioned for Expo ’67.

Still, there’s something melancholyabout it. Is it the sculpture? Or me? Both?In any case, the alien-looking artifact re-flects my mood at the end of another dayexploring the capital region’s monu-ments.

In the morning, I parked the car atJacques-Cartier Park and saunteredacross the lawn to Maison Charron —the oldest house in Hull; built, it isthought, by the city’s founder, Philemon

Wright, around the 1830s — where I tooka bench to enjoy my first coffee of theday and admire the boats at the marinabelow me and listen to the hum of com-muter traffic crossing the AlexandraBridge. It was a lovely sun-shiny morn-ing. A fine day, I figured, for a tour ofsome of Hull’s — sorry, Gatineau’s —“monumental” history.

I began by paying my respects to ahockey legend. Maurice “The Rocket”Richard’s larger-than-life statue occupiesa corner of the park at the intersection ofRue Laurier and Boulevard St-Laurent. Irecalled Jean Chrétien’s remark whenRichard died in 2000. The Rocket, theformer prime minister said, “defined andtranscended the game of hockey.”

Lament for a lost era: Exploring Gatineau’s monumental history

With gloves on and stick at the ready, a statue of Maurice ‘Rocket’ Richard occupies a corner of the park at the intersection

of Rue Laurier and Boulevard St-Laurent.

Afterward, I crossed St-Laurent to theMuseum of Civilization for my secondcup of the day on the terrace café at theback of the museum, where I enjoyed theview of Parliament Hill across the river.Below me at the river’s edge was theVoyageur Pathway that would take me toParc Moussette.

When my caffeine requirement wassated, I headed down the sloping bank ofthe Riverside Plaza, pausing at sculptorLouis Archambault’s white-painted steelabstract “people.” My pause for Person-nages, erected in 1967, was glancing atbest.

The museum, however, deserved alonger look. Just before entering the tun-nel of greenery that lines the riversidepathway, I looked back to confirm a long-held conviction that architect DouglasCardinal’s museum, with its walls of rip-pling stone, is the loveliest building ofrecent vintage in the area, certainly bet-ter than the new War Museum, which al-ways makes me think of a half-sunk cap-sized ship.

Cardinal’s museum qualifies as a mon-ument itself. Its curving walls glow in themorning sun.

But then everything seemed to shineand shimmer this morning. Throughgaps in the maples, willows and poplarsthat line the pathway, I could admire the“monuments” on the other side of theriver — the Rideau Canal, the ParliamentBuildings, the Supreme Court, the Na-tional Archives.

But then, rounding a long curve in theriverbank, I caught sight of the Trudeau-era Portage Complex on my right. Thegrey towers are, to my mind, the ugliestbuildings in the Ottawa area. The full aw-fulness of these blank-face buildingslanded like a bag of cement when, just af-ter passing sculptor Phyllis Kurtz Fine’s1978 abstract steel tower, entitled Com-mentary — I came out of the pathway atthe Portage Bridge.

Even the ramshackle remains of theE.B. Eddy industrial complex along RueLaurier between the Portage and theChaudière bridges was preferable.

At least it possesses historical interest,reminding us that this area along the riv-er was once the heart of the region’s lum-ber industry.

I recalled a line from a history book:“Hull without the E.B. Eddy Companywould be like Shakespeare’s play ofHamlet with Hamlet left out.”

A detour up Rue Laval to Place Aubry— passing a statue of 17th-centuryFrench explorer Samuel de Champlainthat I didn’t know existed — offeredsome compensation for the sight of thePortage complex.

I sauntered through the area with itsnarrow lanes lined with bars and restau-

rants and boutiques. I strolled up RueWright to Rue Montcalm. The up-and-down street with its small houses, out-side stairwells and balconies decoratedwith potted plants — “a world quite dif-ferent from the nearby towers,” as Ed-ward Brado rightly observes in his Guideto Ottawa. Over a coffee and croissant atCafé Jean-Sébastian on the corner of RueSaint-Jacques, I admired the surround-ing streets and their false-front shops.They reminded me of small towns inNormandy, as long as I avoided lookingat the surrounding government build-ings.

Afterward, I walked down to RueMontcalm and then left down to Boule-vard Alexandre-Taché to find the en-trance to Parc des Portageurs.

First, though, I stopped at the plaza infront of Les Terrasses de la Chaudière,another government block not quite asugly as the Portage Complex. I found themonument to Hull’s founding father,Philemon Wright. The American entre-preneur and his family were the originalsettlers of the area in 1800, foundingWrightstown, which eventually becameHull in 1875, and establishing the area’slumber industry. The small obelisk witha bronze relief portrait of Wright was un-veiled in 1950 by Governor GeneralAlexander of Tunis on the 150th anniver-sary of the American’s arrival in the area.

Nearby on the plaza is another monu-ment to Hull’s lumbering history. TheFontaine des Bâtisseurs, or Builder’s

Fountain, is a 15-metre structure by artistVincent Théberge composed of cylindersthat symbolize logs. When the waterflows out of the top of the fountain anddown the “logs,” you get a symbolic invo-cation of the timber rafts that once domi-nated the Ottawa River.

Across the street, I entered Parc desPortageurs and walked along VoyageurPathway, finding yet another invocationof Hull’s past. John McEwen’s flame-cutsteel sculpture, entitled Boat Sight, de-picts the bare ribs of an unfinished boat.The boat ribs provide a frame for thespiky skyline of Ottawa across the greyriver and the old industrial works on theislands in the river.

According to my handy NCCbrochure, Boat Sight symbolizes the ar-rival of “culture” in the primeval forest,while the silhouetted dogs curiously cir-cling the boat represent nature. I like thisabstract monument for the simple way itevokes the remembrance of those firstEuropean explorers on the Ottawa Riv-er, stirring the historical imagination tovisualize the travellers who came ashoreon these flat rocks to portage their boatsand canoes around the once-thunderousbarrier of Chaudière Falls.

Further upriver, I find certain anoth-er equally evocative monument to an-other traveler who sojourned on theseshores, Father Jean de Brébeuf. The Je-suit priest, according to the plaque onhis statue in Parc Moussette, was “tor-tured by the Hurons” and “died mar-


Victor Tolgesy’s Explorer II is made of corten steel, which is the same metal used

to make warships.

2

tyred by the Iroquois.” It wasa long time ago — March 16,1649, to be precise — and Iwonder whether the wordingwould be different if the stat-ue was unveiled today, ratherthan in the politically incor-rect year of 1926 (a year afterBrébeuf was beatified byPope Pius XI).

Brébeuf’s statue, arms dra-matically raised with a cruci-fix in one hand, stands atop alarge stone cairn, just off RueBrunet at the entrance to ParcMoussette. The Ottawa Riverand the muted roar of the Lit-tle Chaudière Rapids providea fitting backdrop for themonument. From the shore Isee the Champlain Bridge on my right,and, looking left, small rocky islandscovered with gulls and, in the distance,the railway bridge. Across the river, astring of high-rises hide behind a veil ofgreenery.

Sitting on the shore’s edge, the rush-ing river at my feet, in the shade of apoplar, tree, I can’t help but conjureBrébeuf’s presence, imagining himcoming ashore here in 1626, on his wayto the Great Lakes where he would es-tablish his missionary station at Huro-nia.

Here, too, passed the likes of Brûlé,Vignau, Radisson, Desgroseillers, La

Vérendrye and Alexander Mackenzie(strange how names learned in highschool history so readily return). I visu-alize them paddling past, heading up-river, leaving civilization behind, light-ing out for the territory, moving alwayscloser to the unknown — until thewhoosh of a brightly coloured pair ofcyclists dispels the image.

The imagined vision gone, I headback down the pathway, cuttingthrough the quiet streets of Tétreauand along Boulévard Alexandre-Tachéto Rue Montcalm, where I find thesmall island park in the middle ofBrewery Creek and discover the

stranded space ship. While I eat my tuna sandwich and

drain a bottle of Perrier, I study thespace ship. It definitely looks stranded,slowly sinking (so it seems) in a knollof low-lying plants, a forgotten relicfrom a time when men thrilled to thethought of unknown places to explore.

Offering bread crumbs to pigeons, Iimagine the melancholy of an archeolo-gist who knows the artifacts he’s dis-covered are from a heroic era he knowswill never come again.


for the Citizen.

3

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

Islot a toonie in the outstretchedpalm, glancing up and downWellington Street to check if any-one is watching. There is no partic-ular reason to feel self-conscious,

but I do. I don’t usually give money tostatues.

This one, however, elicits such a re-sponse. Timothy Schmalz’s statue sitscrossed-legged on the corner of Kentand Wellington streets, half-hiddenamong the tulips and daffodils that fillthe planters in front of St. Andrew’s Pres-byterian Church.

Perhaps half-hidden is the wrongword. The statue, entitled Whatsoever ...,is quite visible, but it surprises me. I’vewalked passed the old church manytimes, but for the life of me I couldn’t re-call noticing the hooded beggar. I guess Iwasn’t paying attention.

Statues are like that. We create them,plop them in some spot, and then forgetthem. It’s not that we no longer “see”them, but rather, we no longer pay atten-tion. They become a visual version ofwhite noise, an unconscious backdrop toour lives.

This notion has been with me allmorning as I explore some of the monu-ments in and around Wellington Street.Think of Wellington and, no doubt, youvisualize all those grand buildings — theSupreme Court, the Bank of Canada, theold Justice Building, the ConfederationBuilding.

But there are other aspects to Welling-ton — sombre, inspirational and whim-sical — that you may not consider untilyou pay attention to, and rediscover, itsvarious monuments.

As I walked, I kept encountering ob-jects — statues, monuments and plaques— I know I’ve seen before. For some rea-son, though, I felt like I was seeing themfor the first time.

My sense of discovery began with TheSecret Bench of Knowledge on the terracein front of the National Library andArchives on Wellington Street, where Itook a morning coffee.

Artist Lea Vivot’s sculpture of a boyand a girl on a bench has been theresince 1993. It is a lovely, whimsical piece.The boy, with a bitten apple in his hand,

whispers sweet nothings in the girl’s ear,a reversal, I presume, of the Biblical storyof Eve tempting Adam.

I’ve seen the sculpture many times, ofcourse, but sipping my coffee beside theyoung lovers, I noticed the dozens ofhandwritten messages inscribed on thebench. Some of the signatures are thoseof well-known people — writer W.P. Kin-sella and poet George Elliott Clarke, forexample — but the sentiments of chil-dren are the most appealing. “I lovehockey, books, and I like to read in bed,”says eight-year-old Nicholas Defazio. “Ilike books because you can use yourimagination,” says Carol Ramsey, alsoeight.

Ditto for statues, I said to myself as Ipacked up my thermos and crossedWellington, heading for another “un-seen” sculpture.

The Canadian Phalanx was created af-ter the First World War to honour Cana-da’s war veterans. It occupies an islandin the middle of Lyon Street, just offWellington, under the Memorial Archlinking the east and west MemorialBuildings.

I suspect it is one of Ottawa’s more ig-nored — or, better, unattended — monu-ments because of its location, hemmedin as it is by traffic lanes on each side.I’ve driven by it regularly, but today wasthe first time I really looked at it.



Paying attentionWhimsy, surprises and moments of reflection on Wellington Street

On the corner of Kent and Wellington sits Timothy Schmalz’s statue,

Whatsoever

Sculptor Ivan Mestrovic’s marble re-lief, unveiled in 1920, depicts a disci-plined line of soldiers with rifles loweredand bayonets fixed. Set inside a granitearchitectural frame by AleksanderTopolski, the work possesses all the dra-ma and tension of charging soldiers de-termined to achieve their objective.

Back on Wellington, I strolled towardParliament Hill, thinking to find anothercoffee. Instead, I find this figure in frontof St. Andrew’s. Wrapped in a blanket,head bowed and hidden, the begging fig-ure is startling. I see nothing of the faceuntil I bend to its level, and realize I’mlooking into the bearded face of Christ.A nearby plaque in the tulip bed quotes apassage from the Bible, Matthew 25:40 —“Truly, whatever you did for one of theleast of these my brothers and sisters,you do for me.” Only as I’m about toleave do I notice the “wound” in the up-turned hand protruding from beneaththe blanket. The purpose is obvious, andbefore I leave I pull a coin from my pock-et.

Walking past the Bank of Canada, Ipause to study the seven bronze plaques— all muscular nudes — that decoratethe bank’s neo-classical facade above thedoor. Phyllis Jacobine Jones’s allegoricalreliefs of men and women were commis-sioned in 1937, and represent Canada’sprimary industries of fishing, electricity,mining, agriculture, forestry, manufac-turing and construction (remember thiswas before NAFTA).

I cross the street, strolling around theold Justice Building to admire the carv-ing of a musket-toting voyageur infringed buckskin set high on the wall onthe corner of Kent and Wellingtonstreets, and the feathered Indian abovethe door on the west-facing façade.

I follow the curving driveway past thedoors of the Supreme Court to pay myrespects to Louis St-Laurent, the primeminister from 1948 to 1957. His lonelystatue, unveiled in 1976, occupies a cor-ner of the big rectangle of lawn in frontof the court. Sculptor Elek Imredy de-picts St-Laurent seated in a suit andgown and facing the Supreme Courtwhere he pleaded numerous cases as alawyer before entering politics. I thinkhe’d look less lonely among the otherprime ministers on Parliament Hill, al-though he does have the companionshipof Veritas and Iustitia, Truth and Justice,the two statues that flank the courtdoors.

My last monument of the morning ison the terrace behind the National Li-

brary and Archives —it’s a splendid statue ofSir Arthur GeorgeDoughty, the Dominionarchivist from 1904 to1935.

The statue was pro-posed by former primeminister MackenzieKing in 1937, and begunby Robert Tait McKen-zie. It was finished byanother sculptor,Emanuel Hahn.

It is a handsomework, showing Doughtyseated in a scholarlygown, fountain pen inhis right hand poisedover a manuscript onhis lap. But it’sDoughty’s words on thepedestal that give thismonument its poignancy.

“Of all national assets, archives are themost precious: they are the gift of onegeneration to another and the extent ofour care of them marks the extent of ourcivilization.” I can’t think of a better ar-gument for attending to monuments.

I really need another coffee. I think ofreturning to The Secret Bench of Knowl-edge, but on impulse I walk back to St.Andrew’s.

I’m curious. The coin is gone. Someone was paying

attention. I hope they paused for a mo-ment’s refection before taking the mon-ey.

I drop another toonie into the wound-ed palm. I’ll have to forgo the coffee, Iguess.


Citizen.


The Secret Bench of Knowledge is inscribed with hand-written messages. Some

of the signatures are well known — W.P. Kinsella, George Elliott Clarke, for

starters. In other places, children have signed the sculpture.



A spirit in the stone ruins

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

William Lyon MackenzieKing, Canada’s longest-serving prime minister,was unquestionably acharacter of contradiction.

He was an ambitious politician with acapacity for ruthlessness that enabledhim to thrive during 40 years of publiclife. But he was also a ghost-haunted,lovelorn man given to séances with hisdead mother. As biographer C.P. Staceyputs it, King “was an inhabitant of twoworlds.”

King was certainly aware of his bifur-

cated soul — “There is no doubt I lead avery double life,” he wrote in his diary.But only when his diaries became publicafter his death in 1950, did Canadianslearn that the bland and plodding manwho led them on and off for 22 years be-tween 1921 and 1948 possessed a strangeinner life.

Maybe they didn’t look closely enough,I think as I continue to explore the capi-tal region’s monuments with a strollaround Kingsmere, the country estate inGatineau Park that King bequeathed toCanadians. If you want clues to King’spsyche, this spread of gardens, gargoylesand stone ruins is the place to look. It is

both beautiful and idiosyncratic.“The true, abiding passion of King’s life

was his estate in the Gatineau Hills,”writes Edwinna von Baeyer in her 1990book, Garden of Dreams: Kingsmere andMackenzie King. “King was more relaxedat Kingsmere, more inclined to give his‘other life’ fuller expression.”

I adopt the romantic spirit of theplace, imagining myself as King’s gueston a tour of Moorside, one of the twomain areas of Kingsmere. We admirethe steep-roofed cottage with its wrap-around veranda, the flagstone walk-ways, the towering oaks and maples,and the scattering of statuary, sundials

My tour guide of Moorside? William Lyon Mackenzie King

Former Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King pieced together these stone ruins from the remnants of

other buildings. Some of the stones were salvaged after the fire that destroyed the Parliament Buildings in 1916, while

others were recovered from the British Houses of Parliament after they were renovated.

and birdbaths. We pause at the balustrade at the edge

of the terraced lawn to admire the gar-den below — a French-style section witha symmetrical arrangement of gerani-ums and roses, and an English-style sec-tion with its perennial display of pop-pies, peonies and irises.

I express appreciation that my com-panion didn’t cover the occasional slabsand boulders of the Canadian Shield thatthrust through the green expanse oflawn. He explains that he wanted to ex-press his political vision of the countrythrough landscaping: a rugged landwhere French- and English-speakingCanadians attempt to live together.

The spirit leads us to the stone ruins— the Window on the Forest, the Arc deTriomphe and the Abbey Ruins, as theyare titled — that King pieced togetherover the years from the remnants of oth-er buildings. Some of the stones weresalvaged from the fire that destroyed theParliament Buildings in 1916, while oth-ers were obtained from fragments of theBritish Houses of Parliament he some-how recovered after they were renovat-ed. It’s hard to conceive a contemporaryprime minister getting away with such aprivate beautification project, but thenit’s even harder to imagine contempo-rary politicians possessing King’s imagi-nation.

The arch of Arc de Triomphe was cre-ated from the entrance pillars of the oldBritish North American Bank NoteCompany in downtown Ottawa. Otherparts of the bank provided the pillars andlintel for the Window-on-the-Forest ruinthat separates the flower gardens fromthe more natural area — more CanadianShield? Sure, why not, my spectral guideresponds — known as the Hidden Gar-den.

The temple-like front piece of theAbbey Ruins — “Greek temple on a hill,”he says — came from a bay windowKing spotted as it was being removedfrom a Sandy Hill house about to be de-molished. King’s imagination turned thebay window into the Acropolis.

Some historians have been inclined tomock King’s romanticism and, no doubt,a psychologist could make much of hisspiritualist inclinations — a defencemechanism for dealing with the insani-ties of public life? — but neither obser-vation dispels the fact Canadians, espe-cially Ottawans, benefited from his “fre-quently irrational private life,” to borrowStacey’s phrase.

Indeed, the streets of Ottawa reflectKing’s spirit almost as much asKingsmere. The National War Memorialwould never have been built on the scaleit was without King’s promotion. As

scholar Susan Phillips-Desroches ob-serves in a 2002 study, the war memorialis not only a military commemoration,but also “a reflection of MackenzieKing’s political, personal, and nationalambitions.”

Throughout his career, King promot-ed the need to beautify Ottawa withparks and monuments suitable to a na-tion’s capital. During his first and sec-ond terms as prime minister in the1920s, King embarked on “ambitiousplans for the city,” writes Phillips-Desroches in her Carleton Universitymaster’s thesis, Canada’s National War

Some historians have

been inclined to mock King’s

romanticism and, no doubt,

a psychologist could make much

of his spiritualist inclinations —

but Canadians, especially

Ottawans, benefited from

his ‘frequently irrational private

life’

If you want clues to

William Lyon Mackenzie

King’s psyche, this

spread of gardens,

gargoyles and stone

ruins at the former prime

minister’s country

estate, Kingsmere, is the

place to look.

2


Memorial: Reflection of the Past or Liber-al Dream? This included, in 1927, thePeace Tower and a statue honouring hispredecessor, Wilfrid Laurier, as well asconstructing “a major public plaza” tobe named Confederation Square.

King addressed his aspirations for Ot-tawa in a 1923 speech to Parliament. “Wemay not come to have the largest, thewealthiest, or the most cosmopolitanCapital in the world, but I believe thatwith Ottawa’s natural and picturesquesetting, given stately proportions, and alittle careful planning, we can have themost beautiful Capital in the world …(and) those who follow in future yearswill come to recognize it as an expres-sion in some degree of the soul of Cana-da.”

By 1937, King thought he had cause forself-congratulation. “I feel the vision ofyears are at last being realized, from theHarper monument on Wellington Street,to the Bank of Canada, and the Warmemorial at the head of Elgin,” he wrotein his diary.

But King wasn’t done with the capital.That same year, he asked French townplanner Jacques Gréber to produce aplan for the national capital region. TheGréber Plan included everything fromparkways and greenbelts to shunting therailway out of the downtown and acquir-ing Gatineau Park.

The results are all around us today.King’s “irrationality” was, it seems, goodfor Ottawa, monumentally speaking, cer-tainly better than much of the rationalplanning of his successors. (Think of theTrudeau-era Portage Complex inGatineau-formerly-known-as Hull, orthe Bunker-by-the-Canal known as theNational Arts Centre.)

Standing in the Abbey Ruins, whereKing once considered locating his grave,I ask my otherworldly companion to ex-plain the conundrum.

I receive a ghostly smile: Life is full ofcontradictions.


for the Citizen

3



Stone: The capital’s monuments

are writings on the landscape

BY ROBERT SIBLEY

Artifacts are thrust into the world. Theyhave the power to stabilize life.

— Geographer Yi Fu Tuan

Many of the names and initials arebarely legible, worn away bytime. Still, I scrape away grit andlichen to discover the identities

of tourists and lovers who’ve scratchedtheir presence on the stone top of the ter-race wall.

Roy Chantal and Babe Shaw were hereMay 31, 1967, to enjoy the view of the Ot-tawa River from the lookout behind theSupreme Court. Ken and Casey visitedin 1974. Jim announced how much heloved Theresa in 1983. Bernard Skehenand Doreen Paul left their mark Sept. 6,1965.

In 1954, Margaret and Ulrich Richieetched their names into stone as a me-

mento of their passing moment. The markings — there are dozens

along the wall’s curving length — arerudimentary, reminiscent of the signslovers carve on tree trunks or little boysinscribe in wet cement. Yet, for all theircommonplace sentiment they arestrangely evocative.

Or maybe, after two weeks of explor-ing the national capital’s landscape ofmonuments, I’m seeing every artifact —from statues and wall plaques to gar-goyles and graffiti — in monumentalterms.

The marks left by Doreen and Bernard,Roy and Babe, Ken and Casey differ onlyin kind and dimension from the monu-ments to kings, queens, soldiers andpoliticians that I’ve encountered.

Statues or scratches, they all testify toa longing to affix the human presencewith meaning and purpose.

The capital’s monuments, like all mon-uments, are writings on the landscape,assertions of human spirit amidst anoverwhelming geography.

Today’s exploration, my final walk, is ameditation on that notion — creating“place” amidst “space.” I’m following thepathways along Ottawa River, from thePortage Bridge to the Alexandra Bridgeon the Ontario side, and then back againon the Quebec side. The walk approxi-mates one I first did shortly after movingto Ottawa nearly 25 years ago, a way of in-troducing the city to myself. Back then, asI recall, everything — Parliament Hill,Champlain’s statue on Nepean Point, theNational War Memorial — possessed theshine of strangeness.

I am obviously more familiar with thecity now. Its streets, neighbourhoods, ar-chitecture and, yes, its monuments, havebecome the familiar and largely uncon-

Markings that cover the curving wall located behind the Supreme Court are rudimentary but, like many of the statues and

monuments scattered through the city, they testify to a longing to affix the human presence with meaning and purpose.

scious backdrop to my life. But walkingthose streets these past weeks has rekin-dled a sense of strangeness, or, more pre-cisely, the familiar has become strange inits familiarity. It’s as if at the end of mytwo-week exploration, I know the placefor the first time, and, somehow, it’s dif-ferent from what it was before.

Even the view before me now — thebroad stretch of the river and theGatineau Hills, blue and hazy in the dis-tance — seems more panoramic than Iremember.

With that notion in mind, I head forthe stairway at the back of Library andArchives Canada that leads to the OttawaRiver Pathway.

■ ■ ■

It’s a fine day for a walk, sunny andwarm with a cooling breeze off the river.Joggers, inline skaters, cyclists and officeworkers, jackets slung over their shoul-ders, crowd the pathway. Three womenshare a blanket on the grassy strip at theriver’s edge. The tinny voice of a tourboat guide competes with the screech-ing gulls holding a convention on rockyoutcrops in the river.

Looking up, I see the steep-sloped cop-per roof of the Supreme Court, and,ahead of me, beyond the tree-thick lime-stone escarpment, the spires of the Par-liamentary Library and the Peace Tow-er. A flag on the tower flaps against theblue sky.

Rounding a bend, I catch my firstglimpse of the entrance to the RideauCanal and the cliffs below Major’s HillPark. The glass dome of the NationalGallery and the silver spires of NotreDame Cathedral catch the sun. Samuelde Champlain’s statue stands in silhou-ette on Nepean Point like some kind ofguiding spirit.

From the plaza at the foot of theRideau Canal, I admire the fairy-taletowers of the Château Laurier and thetowers of the House of Commons at thetop of the escarpment.

On the other side of the canal, setagainst the cliff face, I find a Celtic-stylecross, dedicated to the “memory of the1,000 workers and their families whodied building this canal — 1826-1832.”

The sloping pathway takes me up tothe Alexandra Bridge, or, as it is alsoknown, the Interprovincial Bridge. I stopto read the plaque riveted to a girder atthe bridge entrance. The DominionBridge Company of Lachine, I learn, builtthe bridge in 1900 for the Pontiac PacificJunction and Ottawa and Gatineau rail-ways. Horace J. Beemer was the contrac-tor, and Guy C. Dunn the chief engineer.

Both men are long dead, of course, butwalking across their bridge I think abouthow they live on in their work in the

same way that an artist lives on in hispainting or a poet in his poetry. Even en-gineers crave remembrance.

So, too, do architects, I tell myself as Icross the bridge and turn onto theVoyageurs Pathway below architectDouglas Cardinal’s magnificent Museumof Civilization. Does Cardinal regard hisbuilding as a monument to his life? If so,then his aspirations are fundamentallyno different than those of tourists whocarve their initials on walls. We all wantto be remembered.

So, too, do nations. Nations, however,create remembrance — and significance— through monuments.

THE POWER OF MONUMENTSA monument, according to the Oxford

English Dictionary, is “anything enduringthat serves to commemorate or makecelebrated.” That’s OK, but the largerquestion is the purpose of commemora-tion that monuments serve. I like scholarMarvin Trachtenburg’s summary: Mon-uments “function as social magnets,crystallizations of social energy, one ofthe means civilization has devised to re-inforce its cohesiveness and to give meaning andstructure to life. Monuments are a waymen transmit communal emotions, amedium of continuity and interactionbetween generations.”

It is this symbolic function, this capac-ity for transmitting (and transforming)communal self-understanding that provides monumentswith their power. The ideas and ideals ofany society — freedom and democracy,rights and responsibility, pride and patri-otism, courage and self-sacrifice — de-fine its collective identity. But as anotherscholar, John Roberts, observes, nationsfoster that identity by means of monu-

ments: “Monument-building is aboutmaking thoughts and ideas into concreteform.”

In this regard, monuments should beseen as cultural products that have theirfunction, their power, in the symbolic andphysical realms, and the meaning of amonument reflects the purposes of thosewho built it. Monument builders want toshape society according to their ideals andideas, including that of nation building,says Roberts. Arguably, the most essentialcultural landscape for fulfilling this nation-building purpose is, or should be, the na-tional capital. In Roberts’ words: “Thelandscape of the capital represents a long-term commitment by a variety of actors tocreate an imaginary world of meanings re-lated to what it means to be Canadian.”

Many of the monuments I’ve encoun-tered — the statue of Queen Victoria onParliament Hill, the South African WarMemorial in Confederation Park or theSharpshooters’ statue in front of theCartier Square Drill Hall that commem-orates the Northwest Rebellion, for ex-ample — reflect the city’s British her-itage, which, as Roberts points out, pro-vided “a rich repository of material tohelp in the formation of a new country.”

Monument building acquired a morepan-Canadian flavour after the FirstWorld War. The National War Memorial,the prime ministerial statues on Parlia-ment Hill, and, more recently, the Peace-keeping Monument on Sussex Drive andthe Valiants statues and busts in Confed-eration Square; they all testify to the de-velopment of a “national” identity.

Of course, monuments can becomeunfashionable. Think of the haste withwhich the newly liberated nations ofeastern Europe scrapped the statues toMarx, Lenin and Stalin after the collapseof the Soviet Empire, or how quick Iraqiswere to pull down Saddam Hussein’sstatues in Baghdad. Such is the power ofsymbols.

But you don’t need revolution orregime change for monuments to fall in-to disfavour. They can also fade into thebackground, their meaning and importno longer relevant. As geographers Ken-neth Foote and Maoz Azaryahu write ina 2007 essay, new forms of commemora-tion are added to the cultural landscapewhile others disappear, gradually orabruptly, according to the needs and con-cerns of the times. “Monuments are rein-terpreted and their social and politicalrelevance is reformulated according tocontemporary priorities and sensitivi-ties.”

ARE WE TOO INCLUSIVE?This has been Ottawa’s experience, at

least to some extent. The National WarMemorial may retain its relevancy de-


A plaque commemorates those who

built the Alexandra Bridge.

2

spite the passage of 70 years since its un-veiling — the increasing numbers whoattend Remembrance Day services at-tests to this — but the triumphal SouthAfrican War Memorial or the mournfulSharpshooters’ statue are no longer cele-brated even though they endure.

But something else has been happen-ing to monuments. Foote and Azaryahupoint out that a major shift in regard towhat and who should be commemorat-ed took place in the last decades of the20th century, at least in the West. Whatwe now see, monumentally speaking, isthe commemoration of victims ratherthan heroes and warriors. “A new andsignificant development has been thegrowing emphasis on commemoratingshameful events and honouring thememory of victims of genocides andmassacres, in effect acknowledging moreopenly the influence that violence playsin society.”

The most compelling examples of thisare the numerous commemorations ofthe Holocaust and the victims of theNazi era, along with the victims of thebombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.More recently, memorials have beenbuilt, or are being built, to commemoratethe 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the2001 terrorist attacks on the UnitedStates.

This turn to victim memorializationhas made its mark on Ottawa’s symboliclandscape. The Women’s MonumentAgainst Violence — Enclave — in MintoPark memorializes women who’ve beenabused or murdered by men. The Viet-namese Commemorative Monument onthe corner of Preston and Somersetstreets, with its depiction of a Viet-namese woman running with a child inher arms, is another example of this cur-rent fashion.

John Roberts argues that many of thesenewer monuments reveal “the break-down of the idea of a unitary Canadianheritage.” While earlier monuments “em-phasized broad national themes withoutparticular reference to issues of genderand ethnicity,” more recent works reflect“the fragmentation of identity” that hasresulted from changing demographics,the pressures of multiculturalism and at-tention to ethnic and minority concerns.For many Canadians, he suggests, theolder monumental order, with its empha-sis on statesman, soldiers and greatevents, possesses little that is distinctlyCanadian with which they can identify.

I don’t quarrel with Roberts’ argument.Nor is it unreasonable for supposedlydispossessed groups to want monu-ments that highlight their contributionto the nation. But is there such a thing asbeing too inclusive? If every group canerect a monument to its particular griev-

ance, will monuments lose their unitaryfunction and become symbols of socialfragmentation? If everyone gets theirslice of symbolic territory, can we reallyhave “national” symbols that unite us re-gardless of creed, colour or sexual per-suasion? Might all those monumentsconcerned with violence, injustice,abuse, etc. produce a psychology that re-duces Canadians as a whole to victimstatus since everyone at some point intheir lives is a victim of some injustice orabuse however slight. If everyone is avictim, there can be no heroes as modelsof inspiration. (Who in their right mindaspires to be a victim?) If everyone gets astatue, statues have no real significance.

STRANGENESS IN THE FAMILIARThat idea preoccupies me as I follow

Voyageurs Pathway to the PortageBridge. What kind of monuments aresuitable to the nation’s capital? Perhapsthe answer is right in front of me.Through gaps in the maples, willows andpoplars that line the pathway, the Parlia-

ment Buildings, the Supreme Court andLibrary and Archives Canada are alwaysin view, monuments to a particular ideaof Canada. I remember historian SandraGwyn’s lovely reference to Ottawa as “anidea carved out of the wilderness.”

Crossing the Portage Bridge back toOttawa, I pass the boarded-up ruins ofthe Ottawa Carbide Company Mill, builtin the 1890s, and the recreated aborigi-nal village with its stockade, trading postand teepees on Victoria Island. There aretoo many people milling about the carpark to suit my mood. I abandon my planto conclude my walk at the tip of the is-land with its view downriver. I decide togo to the Garden of the Provinces andTerritories, across from the archives.

But I abandon that plan, too. On im-pulse, I take a staircase off the PortageBridge, following the path that leads tothe end of Richmond Landing, a smallpeninsula that juts into the river betweenVictoria Island and the Ontario side ofthe river, just below the archives. Thereare no people, and I still have a fine view.

I find a spot at the river’s edge where Ican stare at the swirling river and gaze atthe ancient limestone bluffs and thegothic glory of the Parliament Buildings.In the distance I can see Samuel deChamplain’s statue on Nepean Point.

Geographer Yi Fu Tuan once observedthat the capacity to recover the strange-ness in the familiar is a kind of grace, per-haps one of the few forms of transcen-dent experience available in our disen-chanted modern world. Monuments canserve that purpose, too. Monuments are“places” where we can pause for reflec-tion in the midst of our daily routines,places where, with a bit of imagination,we can glimpse the human spirit in itsheroic encounter with the world. Maybewe need to regard monuments as bridgesacross the gap that separates victims and


The South African War Memorial in Con-

federation Park.


Samuel de Champlain’s monument at Nepean Point.

3

Selected Series Sources

■ John Bell, editor, Ottawa: A Literary

Portrait, 1992.

■ Courtney Bond, City on the Ottawa: A

Detailed Historical Guide, n.d.

■ Edward Brado, Guide to Ottawa: A

Cultural and Historical Companion, 1991.

■ City of Ottawa, Ottawa: A Guide to

Heritage Structures, 2000.

■ Katherine Fletcher, Capital Rambles:

Exploring the National Capital Region,

2004.

■ Terry Guernsey, Statues of Parliament

Hill: An Illustrated History, 1986.

■ Robert Haig, Ottawa: City of the Big

Ears, n.d.

■ National Capital Commission, A

Capital Adventure: A Discovery Guide to

Canada’s Capital Region, and Street

Smart: A guide to the art on the streets

of Canada’s Capital Region.

■ Jane Lydon, “Driving By: Visiting

Australian colonial monuments,” Journal

of Social Archaeology, 5, 2005.

■ Susan Phillips-Desroches, Canada’s

National War Memorial: Reflections of

the Past or Liberal Dream? M.A. Thesis,

Carleton University, 2002

■ John Roberts, Nation-Building and

Monumentalization in the Contemporary

Capital, M.A. thesis, Carleton University,

1999.

■ Marvin Trachtenberg, The Statue of

Liberty, 1976.

■ Anthony Trollope, North America, Vol.

1, 1862.

■ Yi Fu Tuan, “Life as a Field Trip,” The

Geographical Review, Jan.-April, 2001.

■ Kenneth Foote and Maoz Azaryahu,

“Toward a Geography of Memory:

Geographical Dimensions of Public

Memory and Commemoration,” Journal

of Political and Military Sociology, 35, 1,

(Summer, 2007).

■ Philipp Fehl, The Classical Monument:

Reflections on the Connection Between

Morality and Art in Greek and Roman

Sculpture, 1972.

4

victimizers, oppressed and oppressor. I remember reading that the Royal Cana-

dian Navy wants to build a monument onRichmond Landing to commemorate itsrich history. I hope they come up withsomething noble, something inspirational,something concretely human (as distinctfrom abstract) with which visitors can iden-tify. And something that recalls the historyof this place.

For a moment I imagine that history, en-visioning when those gothic towers did notexist, when there was only wilderness, andthen, like a movie in fast forward, there’s aghostly Indian village strung along theshore, and Champlain paddling upriver, andthe soldiers of the 100th Prince Regent’sRoyal Regiment of Foot, hard-bitten veter-ans who’d opted to settle in Canada after theWar of 1812-14, landing in the late summer of1818 with their wives and children at thisspot to unload their Durham boats and

march inland through the white pine foreststo the newly surveyed village of Richmond.

It is in such imaginative moments that youunderstand how former prime ministerMackenzie King could refer to Ottawa as“the soul of Canada,” and argue that the city,in its architecture, monuments, museumsand memorials, had to “give some expres-sion of all that is highest in the idealism ofthe nation.”

The screech of a gull breaks my reverie. Istand, looking around as though I might seeevidence of those long ago soldiers. Butthere is no sign of their landing, beyond theghosts of my imagination. And yet I need on-ly look down river to see all those othermonuments Canadians have scratched onthis stony landscape, symbols of a most im-probable country.

Robert Sibley is a senior writer with the

Citizen.

sites unseen - ottawa citizen · 4 the spirit of a community, its self-un-derstanding, is revealed,...

Documents