OUR STORIES in STONE PART 1 in Ottawa, We're So
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OUR STORIES IN STONE PART 1 In Ottawa, we’re so accustomed to statues and memorials that we no longer see them. They are … Sites unseen CHRIS MIKULA, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN 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. Stopping among statues 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 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. verybody ignores Sir Galahad. For one, to stop at Sir Galahad, a statue flip-flops take pictures of each other be- an hour I’ve been parked on a dedicated a century ago to the memory neath the famous cross-country runner’s Ebench at the corner of Metcalfe of Henry Albert Harper that occupies bronze legs, natural and artificial. A mid- and Wellington streets, watching early prime real estate on Wellington in front dle-aged couple in shorts and sun hats morning strollers, office workers and of a Parliament Hill gate. follow suit. Another young couple reads tourists. The tourists are easy to spot in Nobody does. Instead, they seem to the plaque about the young man’s at- their gaudy clothing and thick-soled prefer the Terry Fox statue in the plaza. tempt in 1980 to run across Canada to shoes. I keep waiting for someone, any- A couple of Chinese girls in shorts and raise awareness about cancer. 2 As I walked the length of the granite I had a similar experience at the wall,touching the inscribed names, Vimy Memorial in France,where catching my reflection in the the names of thousands of polished stone,I couldn’t help Canadian soldiers are carved. but feel loss and sorrow even though Imagining those young men I lost no relatives or friends clawing their way up a muddy slope to the Vietnam war. under the hail of enemy fire,well, I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t feel a lump in their throat. VIETNAM MEMORIAL CHIP SOMODEVILLA, GETTY IMAGES VIMY MEMORIAL WAYNE CUDDINGTON, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN Obscurely, I’m disappointed. In the em about King Arthur and his knights, particular events, ideas, individuals or spring of 1976, during my first visit to Ot- carved into the granite pedestal: “If I lose groups of persons,” as geographer tawa, a friend took me on the obligatory myself I save myself.” Wilbur Zelinsky put it — are built to im- tour of Parliament Hill. We strolled along Of course, I would learn more about pinge on our consciousness, to make us Wellington Street to Bank Street and the Harper Memorial years later after I remember and, presumably, think about then on to Parliament Hill, following the moved to Ottawa — how, for instance, a particular historical event or person or curve of the driveway in front of the the statue of Sir Galahad, the chivalrous situation. House of Commons and past the Senate, knight of Arthurian legend, was chosen But as the novelist Robert Musil once emerging on Wellington with the Na- by his close friend, William Lyon observed, “There is nothing in the world tional War Memorial on our left at the Mackenzie King, the future prime min- as invisible as monuments.” We erect top of Elgin Street. We were heading that ister, and was modelled on George Fred- them to be seen, to attract attention; yet, way when I spotted the statue of Sir erick Watts’s famous painting, Sir Gala- at the same time, “something has im- Galahad farther up the sidewalk on my had. But it was the image of Sir Galahad pregnated them against attention. Like a right. — not the statues of prime ministers or drop of water on an oilskin, attention I’ve always been an inveterate reader the Parliament Buildings — that lingered runs down them without stopping for a of plaques, a compulsive inspector of in my memory long after my first visit to moment.” monuments. Sir Galahad struck me as the capital. Does familiarity breed complacency? oddly out of place — the bronze figure Do we lose sight of what is before our of a young man wrapped in a wind- THE PAST IS PRESENT eyes? Geographers argue that the prob- whipped cloak, sword in one hand, So now, on another day 33 years later, lem with monuments is that we tend to standing on a granite block, looking up it seems appropriate to begin a “pilgrim- ignore statues and other commemorative into the sky, dreamily unaware he’s about age” of Ottawa’s monuments with the artifacts because they become part of the to fall into traffic if he takes a step for- statue that first captured my imagination. unconscious background to our lives. We ward. I had to investigate. Living in Ottawa, you become so used see them but we are no longer con- And so I had my introduction to Henry to the presence of monuments — the sciously aware of their presence, and, Albert Harper, a young civil servant who, Peacekeeping Monument on Sussex Dri- hence, we become detached from the as the plaque relates, drowned in his 28th ve or the Human Rights monument in purpose they are intended to serve. year trying to save Miss Bessie Blair front of City Hall on Elgin Street, for ex- This series is a response to complacen- when the young woman fell through the ample — that you no longer really see cy, a field guide for the recovery of a ice on the Ottawa River on Dec. 6, 1901. them. It’s a paradoxical situation. Monu- communal spirit. I am out to discover, or, I read the line from Idylls of the King: ments — objects whose function “is to more precisely, reclaim, the soul of the The Holy Grail, Lord Tennyson’s epic po- celebrate or perpetuate the memory of city. 3 The spirit of a community, its self-un- in France, where the names of thousands derstanding, is revealed, in part at least, There is no grand Mall of Canadian soldiers posted missing and in its artifacts. Museums and galleries, in the national capital, presumed dead are carved into its mas- memorials and monuments, statues and sive ramparts. Looking across the Douai plaques; they all reflect the ideas that no Trafalgar Square, Plain, imagining those young men claw- give meaning and purpose to a place. no Arc de Triomphe. ing their way up a muddy slope under Hence, my walking tour of Ottawa’s the hail of enemy fire, well, I don’t know monuments and statues constitutes an What does this say how anyone wouldn’t feel a lump in their attempt to tap the animating idea, the throat. psyche, of the nation’s capital. about Ottawa? Not all monuments produce an emo- tional response, of course, but, some- WHERE DID WE COME FROM? times, with a bit of imagination and a I don’t think anybody would regard sense of historical empathy, a monument Ottawa as a monumental city, at least in can provide a sense of connection with the same way as, say, London, Washing- what’s gone before you. In Paris, for ex- ton or Paris. London probably has more ample, I long ago adopted — I adopt statues than any city in the world. Kings monuments in most cities I visit — the and queens, soldiers and politicians, po- statue of Marshal Ney, the general who ets and artists, explorers and educators, defended Napoleon’s army during the re- villains and heroes; you’ll find them en- treat from Moscow in 1812. He stands sconced on a pedestal somewhere in the waving a sword beneath the chestnut maze of London’s streets and parks. trees at the corner of boulevards St- Washington, too, displays a monumen- Michel and Montparnasse. I like to ad- tal mindset in that grand view down the mire him from the nearby terrace of Mall from the dome of Capital Hill to the Closerie des Lilas, imagining, as I sip my shining pillars of the Lincoln Memorial. café au lait, the ebb and flow of ignorant What about Ottawa? Few would dis- armies across Europe and how all that pute that Canada’s national capital is clashing produced the modern world, for more modest in its monumental display. good and ill. There is no grand Mall, no Trafalgar The point is this: To be consciously Square, and no Arc de Triomphe. What aware of a monument, to attend to its does this say about the city in both its lo- “space,” is to realize the past can be re- cal identity and its place as a national ternal physical world in which we act. claimed in the present, at least imagina- capital? Do our monuments demonstrate We might ignore them as we pursue our tively, and that it is possible to connect an imaginative response to history or an everyday lives, but that does not mean to the spirit of the past through the pres- inchoate confusion regarding our collec- they have no hold on us. Their presence ence of a physical object. Thus, monu- tive past? Do they reflect an expansive — and their poignant power — remains ments can be a means by which we tie national vision or the poverty of in our consciousness whether or not together the threads of our worldly ex- parochialism? Such questions form the we pay attention.