Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command of The Royal Canadian Legion www.ns.legion.ca 7 In 1920, the Government of Canada announced that the Imperial War Graves Commission had awarded Canada eight sites—five in France and three in Belgium—on which to erect memorials. Each site represented a significant Canadian engagement and the Canadian government initially decided that each battlefield be treated equally and commemorated with identical monuments. In September 1920, the Canadian government formed the Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission to discuss the process and conditions for holding a memorial competition for the sites in Europe. Interested parties submitted 160 design drawings and of those, 17 submissions were selected to produce a plaster maquette of their respective design. In October 1921, the commission selected the submission of Toronto sculptor and designer Walter Seymour Allward as the winner of the competition. The complexity of Allward's design precluded the possibility of duplicating the design at each site; therefore the commission revised its initial plans and decided to build two distinctive memorials and six smaller identical memorials. At the outset, members of the commission debated where to build Allward's winning design. Committee member and former Canadian Corps commander, Lieutenant-General Arthur Currie argued in favour of the government placing the monument in Belgium on Hill 62. In the end, the commission selected Vimy Ridge as the preferred site, largely because of its elevation above the plain below. In 1924, the Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission hired Dr. Oscar Faber, a Danish structural engineer, to prepare foundation plans as well as provide general supervision of the foundation work. Major Unwin Simson served as the principal Canadian engineer during the construction of the memorial and oversaw much of the daily operations at the site. Allward moved to Paris in 1925 to supervise the construction of the monument and the carving of the sculptures with construction of the memorial itself commencing in 1925. About the Cover – The Vimy Memorial (continued on page 9)
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