Do we really need so many statues and monuments or are there more useful ways of expressing gratitude and affection? The Ontario government is spending $1.8 million on a new monument in the grounds of the legislature to honour veterans of war and peace-keeping.
 |
|
name="valign"
top
>
DOWD |
Premier Dalton McGuinty said at the ground breaking ceremony it will help keep alive memories of their heroism, bravery and sacrifices in defence of
freedom.
The memorial will include a 30-metre-long granite wall etched with scenes from Canada?s war history and texts illustrating them, and paved seating
area, where it is hoped people will come and reflect.
The monument was promised by the former Progressive Conservative premier Ernie Eves in the throes of an election and continued by McGuinty?s
Liberal government.
A statue and wall of honour that commemorates firefighters killed in the line of duty, built with the help of a donation of $500,000 from the province,
was unveiled outside the legislature in June.
A memorial to police killed on duty was constructed earlier outside the legislature with $675,00 donated by the Conservative government and some Liberal MPPs want a workers? memorial built there to honour those killed on the job.
Toronto?s Jewish community also is asking the Ontario and federal governments to help build a 25-metre high, $5-million memorial to Jewish war
veterans in a Toronto suburb and next to an existing Holocaust memorial.
These are thoroughly worthy causes and those who gave so much should be remembered. But there already are cenotaphs built to commemorate those who served in wars in Toronto?s city centre and suburbs and many communities.
There are memorials to others scattered around the legislature building and few know they are there.
They includes statues of Queen Victoria; King Edward VII, John Graves Simcoe; Ontario?s first lieutenant governor, William Lyon Mackenzie, a leader in the struggle for responsible government; and several premiers.
Governments have renamed existing buildings in the legislature complex after former premiers including John S. Macdonald, James P. Whitney, Oliver Mowat and Mitchell Hepburn, which preserves their names, to some extent anyway, without costing new money.
McGuinty recently renamed an office block the McMurtry-Scott Building, after two noted attorneys-general, one Conservative and one Liberal.
Governments also have built or helped build edifices and named them after luminaries. A Conservative government built a centre near Dorset to help
studies in natural resources and named it after premier Leslie Frost, although the Liberals recently ordered it closed.
The province helped build a research centre to find cures for illnesses such as heart disease and strokes at University of Western Ontario, and
named it after premier John Robarts.
He also is remembered through the fortress-like Robarts Library at the University of Toronto and once commented good-humouredly, ?it?s the ugliest building in the city and it has my damned name on it.?
Two rival groups are arguing whether to name an existing stretch of a highway west of Toronto after Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone or Joseph Brant, a respected Mohawk chief.
Highways also have been named after others, including the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, commemorating two giants of history, and James Snow Parkway, after a former Ontario transportation minister.
A sports arena in Toronto has been named after Larry Grossman, a former Conservative opposition leader, who died of cancer at 53 and would be pleased because he was passionate about sports and coached kids? hockey there
When a 10-year-old boy was killed recently on a field trip, his family established a scholarship and basketball court at the school in his name.
Perhaps naming Ontario?s most travelled highway Veterans Highway or using ?memorial? funds to honour police who gave their lives to help educate their children, would be a way of remembering them usefully every day.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen?s Park press gallery.
