30 years after Berlin Wall fell, monument will rise
Decade in the making, project exposed rifts between NCC, Harper government
Conceived in the musings of a Conservative cabinet minister, launched in a 2010 throne speech, and years in bureaucratic-political purgatory, over size and location, the sod has finally been turned on a long-awaited monument. It will no longer be a mass of concrete sprawled across 3,000 square metres in front of the Supreme Court of Canada, Joanne Laucius and James Bagnall report. Instead the Liberal government and a private charity will erect by next fall a more modest installation in the Garden of the Provinces and Territories.
It shouldn’t take more than a decade to complete a $3-million memorial in Ottawa, but this was no ordinary project. The Victims of Communism Memorial, which has finally entered its construction phase, was conceived in the musings of a former Conservative cabinet minister, Jason Kenney, and launched in a 2010 Throne Speech. The project then spent years in bureaucratic-political purgatory while competing interests figured out what the monument should look like and where it should go. On Thursday, the Liberal government and a private charity confirmed that a monument designed by Toronto architect Paul Raff would be built in the Garden of the Provinces and Territories across from the National Library and Archives in downtown Ottawa. Heritage and Multiculturalism Minister Pablo Rodriguez and Ludwik Klimkowski, chair of Tribute to Liberty, were on hand to mark the official turning of sod. The timing was no coincidence. Friday marks the 29th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The new memorial will be a reminder of resistance against communism and “our incredible love for Canada,” said Klimkowski whose charity raised $1.5 million toward the cost of the monument. About eight million Canadians trace their roots to countries that were or still are ruled by communist dictatorships. The event attracted about 100 people, including government officials, National Capital Commission chief executive Mark Kristmanson and the ambassadors from about a dozen countries once part of the Soviet Union or in its sphere of influence. “In a country like Ukraine, everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has suffered in one way or another,” said Andriy Shevchenko, the Ukrainian ambassador. “It’s a big deal. It’s very important for the Ukrainian-Canadian community. They kept the idea of an independent Ukraine alive for many generations.” The size of the sculpture, to be completed by next fall, and its relatively obscure location are a far cry from the original plan, which at one point would have seen a monument up to nine metres tall occupying about 3,000 square metres in front of the Supreme Court of Canada on a plot of land previously earmarked for a new federal justice building. The first design, by Toronto’s Abstrakt Studio, was a viewing platform that looked down on a series of folded concrete rows that featured millions of “memory squares” that could be touched by visitors to allow them to “viscerally experience the overwhelming scale of the Communist atrocities.” That project was estimated to cost $5.5 million, with $4 million coming from the previous Conservative government, and the remainder coming from Tribute to Liberty. Critics raised questions about the size and scale of the monument and argued its prominent location would destroy long-term plans for the parliamentary and judicial precincts. The controversy raged after the plans were scaled down. The new design, called the Arc of Memory, will be 22 metres long and four metres high and made of more than 4,000 bronze rods that form a gently curving wall that forms a “living calendar” that will split in two at the winter solstice. Attention around the size and placement of the original monument revealed friction between the Conservative government and the National Capital Commission. In June 2015, the board of the NCC declined to give final design approval, making it impossible for the Conservatives to go ahead with the plan before the election in October of that year. The project was cancelled by the new Liberal government in February 2016. The head of the Abstrakt Studio team, architect Voytek Gorczynski, complained to Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly in November 2016 that his team was “completely shut out and are not even given a chance to participate” in the new competition. Klimkowski said his charity has already raised its $1.5-million share of the project and handed it over to the government. The Arc of Memory was chosen by Joly after public consultations in March 2017 and on the recommendations of a jury of design professionals. The design was created by Toronto architect and artist Paul Raff, designer and arborist Michael A. Ormston-Holloway, and landscape architects Brett Hoornaert and Luke Kairys.