Canada Mourning

, a young nation mourning her sons lost in battle. The statue stands over a tomb covered in laurel leaves and bearing a helmet. She faces eastward, looking out to the dawn of the new day.

The statue is depicted as quite depressed with downcast eyes and her chin resting on her hand. The sculptor, Walter Allward (1875–1955), envisioned the statue as “A heroic figure of Canada brooding over the graves of her valiant dead”, this vision reportedly coming to him in a dream [Veteran Affairs Canada article: Remembering the Fallen: The Canadian National Vimy Memorial, http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=history/firstwar/vimy/vimy7] . It has been suggested that the statue is a reference to traditional images of Mater Dolorosa [Canadian War Museum website: http://www.civilization.ca/cwm/vimy/sculptures_e.html] (the Virgin Mary in mourning).

Like all of the Vimy Memorial's twenty sculptures, the statue of "Mother Canada" was originally sculpted by Allward, roughly in life-size, in unfired clay. The statue was then replicated in plaster, a more durable substance. The copy was then sent to France where it was replicated once again by French stone carvers, although double the previous size. The plaster copies of all Vimy's statues were nearly destroyed in the 1960's but instead wound up being restored. The plaster copy of "Mother Canada" is now on display in the Military Communications and Electronics Museum attached to Canadian Forces Base Kingston along with two others [Military Communications and Electronics Museum website: http://www.c-and-e-museum.org/te_tp7.htm] , while the other seventeen are at the Canadian War Museum.

References