War memorial soothes the heart
It’s a war over esthetics, the only kind I favour.
A Montreal design team that put in a high-concept bid for the Afghan War Memorial planned for Ottawa is complaining bitterly because it lost to a design that Canadians actually liked.
Team Daoust, backed by the wellconnected, including former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour, won the jury vote for its stark, minimalist design. But Team Stimson’s warmer Indigenous-inspired design was far more popular in an online poll with votes from the public and the military.
Veterans Affairs chose Team Stimson. Is that unfair? No.
I say this not because the Daoust design is bad. It’s fine for what it is, which is a floor vent, 10 of which I bought recently for my home because the old stripey aluminum ones had had it.
My “Mosaic Series Air Supply Vent Duct Opening Walkable Register for Floor, Powder-Coated With Detachable Steel Louver” cost 49 bucks on Amazon, an absurd price, but what are you going to do, lose a shoe in the hole?
My shoe-sized vent is an oblong grille. It has a network of small square holes, which in Team Daoust’s memorial design refers to “the magnified motif of a burqa, a view opened up by the axis of democracy.”
Which again is fine, except that after Americans, allies and 40,000 Canadians left Afghanistan with their precious axis, the Taliban ended any hope of female freedom. They may soon bring back stoning women to death for adultery.
Why not concentrate on Canada’s soldiers, veterans and non-veterans alike, who will visit the memorial with their families? What will they see? Basically, two panels of an unfinished fence.
One is slanted to create a small gap. Why? Because the crack is “how the light gets in,” Team Daoust says excitedly. (That’s a Canadian quote, certified by your Canadian Quote Ministry.)
The problem is, visitors won’t grasp this up close unless you hang a sign on the grille saying BURQA and on the gap saying “Leonard Cohen quote HERE.”
The design is symbolic. Weeping families and respectful visitors don’t instantly grasp designers’ conceptual creations. They just see a badly aligned fence fragment and keep looking for the monument.
Team Stimson’s design, on the other hand, soothes the heart. It’s based on a medicine wheel, a large welcoming circle of rusted Corten steel, with gaps for entry and a circle of benches for visitors to sit and contemplate “four bronze flak jackets stand draped on crosses, utilitarian yet poignant reminders of protection.”
You can feel safe there, a “home base,” as in a military forward operating base. The walls are inscribed with the names of the dead along with maple leaves, with the final fourth wall dedicated to Afghan allies who died. It’s a place to sit quietly and think of sacrifice and service.
The late American artist Richard Serra long ago ruined big rusted steel for the public with his huge pointless fortress sculptures. For decades, these Great Male eyesores had blockaded helpless American office workers trying to cross plazas for lunch.
But thanks to Indigenous artist Adrian Stimson, I finally understand what Corten steel can do in Canada, encasing and sheltering in a harsh climate.
Team Daoust lobbied hard for symbolism, the CBC reporting that Arbour even managed to call the prime minister.
But Team Stimson won for beauty and respecting the dead. No contest.