It might be a little bit odd to write an editorial about an editorial, but it is so rare that one, especially from the Globe and Mail, is so particularly right.
The article I’m referring to was published in the national newspaper on June 23, titled “Mother Canada statue is hubristic, ugly and just plain wrong.”
The background to this is that recently the Never Forgotten National Memorial Foundation decided it wants to build a giant 80-foot tall statue, costing about $25 million. It would be built on the coast of Cape Breton, facing Europe, posterior pointed towards the rest of Canada.
The problems that the editorial board of the Globe and Mail had with it were numerous and fair, riddled with extensive grotesque adjectives. It makes me think that hope is not lost for the power of the pen in Canada.
The first reason given is that it simply does not belong in a national park.
Secondly, it is redundant. Meant to stand as a memorial to those fallen — a good and right reason to have memorials — there are plenty of those types of statues around Canada and Europe. Placing one in the middle of one of the most beautiful natural landscapes in Canada just seems silly.
The final reason — and my favourite — is that it is an ugly piece of work.
There’s no artist associated with it, probably because whoever designed it is rightfully ashamed.
“In a hubristic act of arrogant unoriginality, Mother Canada is merely an oversized knock-off of the mournful Canada Bereft statue created for the 1936 Vimy Memorial,” the editorial states.
“As if, 80 years later, far from the bloody battlegrounds of the Great War, in a very different Canada, the only artistic adjustment required was to scale up, way up.”
I don’t like adjectives, as a rule, few newspaper folk do. But in this case, I would say it is not only warranted, it is necessary.
I’m not sure that it is directly related, I know there are other scandals associated with this weird, awful project, but since this scathing bit of opinion was published, the project has been losing support. That makes me think that maybe the national Canadian media is doing their job after all. I hope the trend continues.
