Mother Canada statue wrong way to remember, say history professors

A group of history professorsis adding their voices to the opposition of the Never Forgotten War Memorial Foundation,calling the proposed eight-storeystatue "blind patriotism."

The organization is planning to build the 24-metre tall statue called Mother Canada in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park at Green Cove. It's a memorial to soldiers whose remains were never brought home to Canada.

JonathanRoberts, DavidCampbell, CoreySlumkoskiandMartha Walls of Mount Saint Vincent Universitywrote acommentary for The Chronicle Herald earlier this month saying the project "falls into a trap of blind patriotism."

There's a problem of being monumental.- JonathanRoberts

Roberts sayshe doesn't think anyone who visits the site will go away with any deeper knowledge of Canada's wars.

"We're nottrying to beanti-veteran," he said."We're not trying to be negative ... but we feel the monument is not appropriate to commemoratingthe First World War or other wars because it distills down the story of those wars in kind of a simplified statue and mainly about soldiers dying and those who participated in those wars."

Mother Canada is thememorial's centrepiece, featuringa woman with her arms outstretched toward Europe.

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"We're concerned that a giant statue, which is acolossus, might be the wrong kind of public art to remember wars with," Roberts said.

The professoradds that largestatues have been falling out of favour all over the world for years.

"Canada has never built a colossusbefore. We' re not really in thebusiness of building giant statues because they are so politically divisive," he said."If it were the casethat a giant statue generated economic developmenttherewould be a lot of giant statues all over the place."

"Those statues don't really fit the Canadianculture as we see it."

He says they make sense in other countries: large religious statues or shrines to dictators in former communist countries.

The memorialplan also includes parking for 300 vehicles, a restaurant, souvenir shop and an interpretive centre.The group of teacherspointsout thatthe foundation's websitehas some letters and photos online, and it might be more worthwhile to put that online.

"There's a problem of being monumental. We think it really simplifies things. We feel people will goto the monument to see the monument rather than get a sense of what happened and how complex the war was and how much misery people suffered," said Roberts.

The professor's commentscomes on the heels of a support rally in Green Cove Sunday where about 180people turned out to show their support.