The National War Memorial commemorates those who died. It is the resting place of an unknown soldier. The death of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo will now change that. (From the archive) LestWeForget RemembranceDay
November 8, 2014This article first appeared on Nov. 8, 2014, the year that Cpl. Nathan Cirillo was killed while defending the National War Memorial
Constantly on the move, sweeping through northern France and Belgium, punching way beyond its weight, the Corps played a vital role in the Allies’ final victory. The Canadians were at Mons in Belgium when the guns ceased firing at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11. They had suffered their last casualty, Pte. George Price of the Saskatchewan Regiment, just two minutes before.
Nor could they be mourned in the traditional ways, after the Dominions and Britain endorsed the decision of the Imperial War Graves Commission to leave the dead where they fell, buried with their comrades in the vast military cemeteries of France and Belgium. The commission’s decision is startlingly at odds with contemporary attitudes.
By 1928—the 10th anniversary, as postwar deaths of veterans mounted—there was a push to separate the war and Thanksgiving, and to emphasize, not gratitude for victory, but recognition of sacrifice. Three years later, Ottawa moved Thanksgiving to an earlier place on the calendar, and decreed a new name and precise date to honour, specifically and precisely, fallen soldiers:would be observed on Nov. 11 itself.
Back home, a parallel process had been unfolding. In 1926, the call for submissions for a National War Memorial in Ottawa was won by English sculptor Vernon March, whose design went on to have a history as difficult as Allward’s Vimy. March barely got started before he died in 1930, and it took his six brothers and a sister to complete it by 1932.
Like Vimy, the Ottawa memorial was too freighted with meaning for anything less than a royal unveiling. King George VI dedicated it before a crowd of 100,000 on May 21, 1939, striking in his speech every theme the memorial was meant to invoke: “Canada’s spirit and sacrifice in the Great War . . . the zeal and chivalry . . . the voice of the nation’s conscience . . . the very soul of the nation.
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