Stop the Mother Canada monument.

Mother Canada is an ugly monstrosity. 

In another example of the highest bidder being able to buy favour with the Harper government, the Never Forgotten National Memorial Foundation is proposing to build a 10 storey statue of a woman with her arms stretched towards the Atlantic Ocean and Europe at Green Cove in Nova Scotia’s otherwise amazing Cape Breton Highlands National Park.  The foundation intends for the statue, called Mother Canada to be a memorial to those who fought in both world wars.  The site would also feature extensive stone walkways, a souvenir shop and snack bar, and parking for 300 cars, campers, and tour buses.

From an environmental and aesthetic standpoint, the plan is all wrong.  Cape Breton Highlands National Park is a beautiful place.  It is about rugged coastline, mountains, ancient forests, crystal-clear brooks, and the human history of aboriginal and Highland Scottish settlement.  It is not about a concrete monolith altering the beauty of a rugged coastline and inviting crowds, commercialism, and the garbage both leave behind.

Retired Canadian Army Major General Lewis MacKenzie is one of the prominent backers of Mother Canada.  He argues that the site on Cape Breton is among the last places (or first places, depending on the direction being travelled) sailors, soldiers, and airmen would have seen while crossing the Atlantic to or from Europe during the war.  General MacKenzie, although a respected military leader, does not appear to be strong on geography.  Halifax was the main point of embarkation and disembarkation.  The first or last coastline any serviceman would have had a good look at was probably the area around Cole Harbour or the lighthouse at Sambro.  There are already several war memorials in Halifax’s Point Pleasant Park that provide a fine vantage point of the Atlantic at a sensible location.  Without much surprise, General MacKenzie is also a Conservative supporter.  In 1997, he was a candidate for the former Progressive Conservative Party in Ontario’s Parry Sound-Muskoka Constituency.  Soon to be former Justice Minister Peter MacKay is also a supporter of the plan.  The Never Forgotten foundation people appear to be a group of elitist conservatives with money who have paid for influence.  Their plan, and the political interference with it are not unlike the motivations of Tribute to Liberty and its plan for the ideologically-motivated Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Ottawa.

How many war memorials do we need anyway?  The amount of monuments does not necessarily indicate the actual level of support among Canadians for veterans or the historical significance of our contribution to the world wars.  We have a National War Memorial in Ottawa.  It, not a 10 storey likeness of the woman on the Royale toilet paper package should remain the focal point for the remembrance of those who fought, survived, or did not.  Just about every village, town, and city across this country has a war memorial of some kind.  Royal Canadian Legion halls, churches, hospitals, universities, and community halls almost always contain plaques, scrolls, or displays honouring veterans and those who died at war.  What would Mother Canada achieve?  Nothing.  I have known several veterans of World War Two.  None of these men ever talked nostalgically of Mother Canada while discussing their war experience.  The only mothers they expressed admiration for were their actual mothers who wrote to them and prayed for them back in Canada, or in Britain.  Their service was to the Crown and Canada, not any mythical mother.  Some veterans are opposing the Mother Canada project.  One elderly woman says the statue won’t do anything to actually assist the needs of veterans.  The government should be improving their benefits for health care, pensions, and employment re-training, not destroying pristine wilderness to build a statue that looks like something that would be built by one of the regimes Canadians have gone to war against in the past.

There’s a mediocre religious dimension to the Mother Canada statue.  In politically correct Canada, saying a modern monument is a likeness of the Blessed Virgin Mary would never go over well.  Instead, the statue is blandly called Mother Canada in order to avoid any explicit linkage with the Mother of Jesus Christ.  Observant Christians should be rightfully offended by this statue which is nothing but a mediocre knockoff of an image many of them consider sacred.  A more authentic image of a real Canadian mother would be to have the statue carrying a purse with a shoulder strap, a Tim Horton coffee cup in one hand, and a baby seat with a child in it in the other.

Contact your MP, the Minister of the Environment and Parks Canada if you oppose the Mother Canada monument for environmental, historical, or ethical reasons.  As with the victims of communism memorial in Ottawa, Canadians need to tell the government that our public spaces, particularly the wilderness for which we are renowned, cannot be modified or destroyed by the highest bidders with money and social title.