South African War Memorial

This impressive memorial at Queen Street West and University is not the oldest of the memorials we will be looking at. It was erected in 1910. However, it combines all three themes that we see in the earlier memorials, in various combinations. The first is the grandeur of the enterprise being commemorated. The second is the identification of this enterprise with noble or religious ideals (the angel and the figure of Mother Canada). The third is the commemoration of the individual soldier. Grand as this memorial is, it includes statues of two ordinary soldiers doing their duty.

This memorial is the work of Walter Seymour Allward, whose best known work is the Canadian memorial at Vimy Ridge.

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Memory and Morality © John FitzGerald, 2008

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