Opinion: Vancouver’s monuments to sacrifice should be maintained and explained

Remembrance need not look the same for everyone.

For some, it is a ceremony on Nov. 11. For others, it is a poppy, a moment of silence, a visit to a cemetery, or simply a pause to remember. And for some, it may even mean sleeping in.

What matters is not that we all remember in precisely the same way. What matters is that we recognize the selflessness of those who gave everything in the service of others.

Our public institutions have a special responsibility. They are the custodians of the places and symbols through which one generation communicates with another. They should ensure that sacrifice is neither forgotten nor diminished.

To that end, Vancouver has some work to do.

Consider the small stone monolith beside Rollerland on the grounds of the PNE. Its inscription reads: “From the surviving members in tribute to the memory of their comrades.”

It commemorates the 29th Battalion (Vancouver), CEF, better known as Tobin’s Tigers. The battalion mobilized in Vancouver and trained at Hastings Park before leaving for the First World War. Its men fought at Vimy Ridge, the Somme, Passchendaele, Cambrai and Hill 70. More than 600 members of the 29th Battalion were killed during the war.

The monument was dedicated in 1938, when Hastings Park was a very different place. Today, development has largely swallowed its context. Affixed to the memorial is a squat flagpole with a thrashed light fixture attached; a weathered Maple Leaf flag that has been eclipsed by nearby trees. What was once a place of collective memory is easy to overlook.

The memorial deserves to be moved to a prominent, appropriate setting, properly landscaped and illuminated. It should not be hidden beside a recreational facility.

Then there is the Angel of Victory outside downtown’s Waterfront Station.

The bronze sculpture, by Montreal sculptor Coeur de Lion MacCarthy, depicts an angel carrying a fallen soldier toward heaven. Commissioned by Canadian Pacific Railway in 1921, it commemorates more than 1,100 CPR employees who died in the First World War. Vancouver is home to one of three identical castings (the others are in Winnipeg and Montreal).

It is a remarkable monument. It is also incomplete. The angel originally held a wreath in her raised hand. Vancouver’s wreath was broken decades ago. Heritage Vancouver has identified the statue as a neglected historic monument and noted the need to restore it. But nothing’s been done since.

This is not simply about fixing a piece of bronze.

A war memorial is a message from the dead to the living.

These monuments were entrusted to us by people who came before. They remind us of people whose graves are often thousands of kilometres from the communities they left behind. When those reminders disappear into obscurity or deteriorate, the connection between generations weakens.