A history of remembrance

In 1923, a temporary war memorial that stood at Portage and Main in front of the Bank of Montreal was torn down. The makeshift cenotaph had been erected soon after the Great War in an outburst of emotion for the literally thousands of Winnipeg boys killed or injured in the war.It was one of thousands of memorials across Canada and around the world built by citizens aghast at the bloodshed and sacrifice that had so recently ended. Manitoba, too, from its capital to its smallest villages, was determined not to forget.

People were upset at the demise of the Portage and Main cenotaph, at least until it was replaced at the end of the year with a new and impressive monument that has stood guard over the corner ever since.

The Free Press called the bronze figure "a veritable Captain Courageous. There is no swagger, no presentation of glittering swords or of the panoply of war in any of its forms, of attack or defence. Only a resolute, undaunted figure, calmly facing danger."

The artist, the paper concluded, "had succeeded most perfectly."

Well, not quite. The statue depicted an American officer, a fact betrayed by the cut of his uniform and style of boots.

The Bank of Montreal, which erected the monument to honour its employees who fell in the war, hired New York sculptor James Earle Fraser for the design. The face was modelled on a bank employee who was a captain in the war, but Fraser apparently didn't have a model of a Canadian uniform.

The gaffe caused some grumbling among veterans at the time, but it has since been largely forgotten. Fraser won one of America's highest art awards for the sculpture, but there was no mention of the fact that it was considered an insult at the time to the 600,000 ordinary Canadians who served in the war. Art, obviously, does not have to be correct to be great.

The uniform on the soldier on the war memorial on Provencher Boulevard isn't Canadian either, but it wasn't a design error. The monument was erected in 1938 by the Belgian community to honour Belgium's soldiers. It is unique in Canada because it is the only monument to show a dead soldier, face down in the mud. Other monuments, such as the CP Rail memorial to its employees now located in front of Deer Lodge Centre, show soldiers ascending into heaven, but the pose is not one of death, but of resurrection and salvation -- a common theme in memorials across Canada.

Some French-Canadian war memorials, such as the one in St. Boniface Cathedral Cemetery, honour only their own war dead, or heroes from France, such as Joan of Arc or General Ferdinand Foch, examples of which can be found in St. Pierre and St. Claude. There are many ethnic war monuments in Manitoba, including one recently installed by the Portuguese community. A spokesman said it is the only Portuguese war memorial in North America. Portugal had 9,000 men killed in the First World War.

In 1924, Winnipeg was still without a cenotaph to replace the one torn down to make way for Captain Courageous, so a committee composed of prominent citizens and several organizations was formed to raise money and organize an international design competition.

The competition's managers asked for "a design ... which must at once arrest attention and command respect." Even then, there was the fear that future generations would forget the sacrifice, so the committee wanted something that would stand the test of time. After a lengthy debate about the location, the province agreed to provide the land where the cenotaph stands today.

There were 48 submissions, but the judges were given only numbers, not names, to ensure the integrity of the process. The winner was No. 33, who turned out to be Emmanuel Hahn of Toronto. Hahn's design, which featured two shrouded figures emerging from a rectangular column, was described by the judges as possessing "great dignity and picturesque effect."

The public also approved, until it was discovered that Hahn was born in Germany. It didn't matter that he had moved to Canada when he was seven and was a naturalized Canadian. Veterans and many members of the committee said it was unacceptable that a German would design a Canadian war memorial.

Arthur Parker, secretary of the Winnipeg Board of Trade, led the opposition, saying that to accept Hahn's design would be "akin to asking the relatives of a murdered man to accept a memorial or tomb constructed by the cousin of the man who committed the murder."

Hahn, who designed memorials across Canada, was awarded the $2,500 cash prize, but the committee decided to hold a second competition.

This time the winner was Elizabeth Wyn Wood of Toronto. Her design, which she called the Spirit of the West, featured a muscular young man armed with a sword. The figure was naked except for a loin cloth. Wood's design, the judges said, "is remarkable for its originality and by its heroic proportions is bound to attract attention .... It avoids the similarity of so many war memorials already erected."

Then it was discovered that Wood was Hahn's wife.

Veterans once again expressed their displeasure, claiming it was probably just another work by Hahn submitted under his wife's name.

The committee rejected the design and sent Wood $500 for her trouble.

For reasons that aren't clear, the winner was declared to be the second runner-up, architect Gilbert Parfitt, a provincial government employee. His conventional, artistically inferior design was unveiled in 1928, four years after the competition started. The Hudson's Bay Company, whose store opened two years earlier, was said to be unhappy with its new neighbour. War memorials, it believed, were depressing and not good for business.

Anti-German prejudice was understandably prevalent across Canada during and after the war. Patriotic Winnipeggers had even rejected the word hamburger because it was too German, replacing it with nip, but the treatment of Hahn and Wood was excessive even for the day. Both the Tribune and the Free Press defended the sculptors, as did many prominent citizens, but in the end the emotions of veterans, who left 60,000 comrades in graveyards overseas, overwhelmed all calls for decency and tolerance.

Hahn and Wood went on to stellar careers as sculptors and designers. Hahn even designed several Canadian coins, including the famous caribou quarter.

The story of the cenotaph was Winnipeg at its best and worst. The community came together to build something important, as it has done so often, only to see it tarnished and weakened in the end.

dave.obrien@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 7, 2009 H1