[LINK] "The war monument that’s polarizing Canada"

[rfmcdonald]

MacLean's hosts the Canadian Press article looking at the ongoing controversy over the Mother Canada veterans' memorial proposed for Cape Breton. The history wars continue.

Rhadie Murphy has spent her life on the rugged coastline that snakes along Cape Breton’s northern flank, its pink granite rocks stretching out near her home in the heart of Ingonish.

The 72-year-old is unreserved in her pride and praise of the small community on the eastern edge of the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, calling that piece of the Cabot Trail “the most beautiful place in the world.”

So Murphy and her large family were left shaking their heads in bewilderment when their tranquil hometown took centre stage in a fractious debate over Mother Canada, the towering war monument that could adorn their shoreline.

[. . .]

The 24-metre statue depicts a doleful woman with her arms outstretched toward Europe and the Canada Bereft monument at Vimy in France. The draped figure, meant to embrace soldiers who never returned from distant conflicts, is the brainchild of Toronto businessman Tony Trigiano who was struck by the number of young Canadians buried in a European cemetery he visited.

It has attracted the support of the federal government and Canadian luminaries, including a former prime minister, business heavyweights, prominent journalists and the president of the Calgary Flames.

But the ambitious project has cleaved opinion across the country, with many saying it has no business in a national park and that it cheapens the memory of the war dead who are already commemorated at hundreds of less audacious sites.