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The City Cenotaph in Southern Saskatchewan: Monuments of “Great Simplicity of Design”
Lloyd Bennett
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2017.07.005
Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, Canada
The First World War did more to disrupt lives and reshape Canadian communities than any event in the short history of that country. Out on the prairies, cities and towns sent volunteer citizens to fight for Canada and the British Empire with memorable success in the Great War. By the 1920s, the communities of Saskatchewan looked to mark the achievements of their soldiers overseas, who did not come home, with war memorials. These cenotaphs or “empty tombs” developed from Boer War models and London’s Whitehall cenotaph completed for Armistice Day, 1920. The projects varied from simple cement plinths produced by prairie, stone workshops to the architect-commissioned memorial at Victoria Park, Regina. By the second half of the decade, cities from Saskatoon to Estevan, and towns soon to become cities, decorated their parks and streets with monuments that would become a focus of their community life and remembrance ceremonies for years to come. This paper will document those aspects of the city cenotaph in southern Saskatchewan in terms of community support, site and form selection and aspects of maintenance and the ongoing problem of vandalism, which frustrates city officials and Legion societies to this day.
cenotaph, Saskatchewan, Canada, war memorials, British Empire
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