Ford announces new memorial to Canadian veterans of the Afghanistan campaign

Thestar.com
June 27, 2018
Robert Benzie

A new monument will be built at Queen’s Park to honour the service of Canadian Armed Forces veterans in Afghanistan.

Premier-designate Doug Ford announced Wednesday that the Ontario government would construct the memorial on the legislative precinct.

Premier-designate Doug Ford during his announcement at Canadian Forces College in North York on Wednesday.

“A new generation of heroes, who fought bravely against the terrorists of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, walk among us,” Ford said in a speech at the Canadian Forces College on Yonge Blvd. in North York.

“Too many of those heroes are struggling with the scars of their sacrifice. As a province and as a country, we must always remember the 159 Canadians who never returned from Afghanistan,” he said, noting his administration will also set up a new “hotline” for military families to help them navigate provincial government services when they are transferred to Ontario bases.

Details about the cost, the design, and the timeline for completion of the memorial will be disclosed after the new Progressive Conservative government is sworn in on Friday at Queen’s Park.

It is not unusual for a new premier to want to honour veterans.

After the 2003 election, former Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty expanded the planned veterans’ project that his Tory predecessor Ernie Eves had announced.

The $1.8 million Veterans’ Memorial, which was the first new monument built at the front of the legislature since 1940, was unveiled in 2006.

Designed by Charlottetown-born artist Allan Harding MacKay and Vancouver landscape architects Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg after a national competition, the black granite memorial consists of 1.4-metre-wide etchings of historic Canadian military scenes.

These are mounted on a 30-metre-long granite wall that gently slopes from 1.8 metres at its most narrow point to 2.7 metres in the centre.

It has been likened to Maya Lin’s iconic 1982 Vietnam Veterans War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Ford has not yet determined where the new monument will be built, but there is a potential site at the northwest corner of College St. and Queen’s Park Cres.

That’s where the current Veterans’ Memorial was originally supposed to be located when Eves announced it in 2003 after a visit to Juno Beach, where Canadian troops landed in Normandy on D-Day to begin the liberation of France from the Germans.

“It was probably one of the most moving moments of my life,” the former Tory premier said at the time. “The whole day consumed me. I knew we had to do something. We take a lot of this for granted and we really shouldn’t.”

The first PC premier since Eves echoed that sentiment Wednesday.

“It’s a small gesture, but an important one, that sends a clear message,” Ford said of the new memorial.

Federal Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, himself an Afghanistan veteran, praised the premier-designate for “recognizing the service and sacrifices” of military personnel and their families.