With little fanfare, Veterans Affairs Minister Erin O’Toole earlier this week announced that the National Memorial to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan as well as the National Victoria Cross Memorial will be placed at Richmond Landing, along Confederation Boulevard in Ottawa.
Say where?
That’s the question a number of Defence Watch readers as well as Citizen columnist Kelly Egan are asking.
The Conservative government has pulled out all the stops for a massive Victims of Communism memorial, which is in a premier location in Ottawa. Canada’s Afghan veterans get different treatment, writes Egan.
“The victims of communism get a huge, glorious spot on Wellington Street — for the whole world to see — and those who served or died in Afghanistan get a spot below the Portage Bridge for cyclists to wave at,” Egan noted. “Don’t get it. At all.”
Veterans organizations say they weren’t consulted about the location. The last time I wrote about the Afghan memorial, the plan was to either locate it at the new NDHQ in the former Nortel complex or at Dow’s Lake (a high traffic area particularly in the summer).
“The National Memorial to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan, which was announced May 8, 2014, will serve as a testament to Canadians’ deep gratitude for the strength, courage and valour of Canadian Armed Forces members who reacted immediately to their call of duty and served in Afghanistan in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,” the Veterans Affairs news release stated. “The memorial will also pay tribute to the service, sacrifices and accomplishments of many Canadians, both military and civilian, who helped begin to rebuild Afghanistan.”
Egan writes that the selected site is in a lovely spot: a peninsula in the Ottawa River that sticks out eastward from the Portage Bridge and the Mill St. Brew Pub, which is how you drive in from the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway, until a foot path takes over.
But he notes the site is off the main bicycle and walking path behind Parliament Hill and the “locals tell me it is snowed in during the winter. Nice. I suppose we can just grieve seasonally, or pay homage in snowshoes.”
Kelly Eagan’s full article can be read here:
