thestar.com
Saturday, January 4, 2014
12:36 AM EST
News / Canada
New memorial envisioned to honour Canada's war dead
Toronto businessman is spearheading efforts to build a new memorial to honour Canadians buried abroad or lost at sea.
By: Bruce Campion-Smith Ottawa Bureau, Published on Mon Dec 30 2013
OTTAWA—Toronto businessman Tony Trigiani was driving back to Rome when he passed a cemetery where row after row of tidy headstones mark the resting place of Canadian soldiers killed in the Italian campaign of the Second World War.
Set on high ground on the Adriatic coast, the Moro Canadian War Cemetery contains the graves of 1,375 Canadian soldiers.
Trigiani stopped to pay his respects. As he walked along the rows, he was struck by the ages of the fallen soldiers.
One grave caught his eye — Ted Truskoski, killed on April 19, 1944. The son of Karol and K. Marcella Truskoski, of Creighton Mine, Ont., he was just 17, according to the marker.
“It’s not that I wasn’t aware of cemeteries and Canada’s participation but I just got jarred out of another mindset,” said Trigiani.
“It played on me heavily for some reason. I don’t know why . . . 17. What was I doing at 17?”
It was from that trip, that the idea took shape for a memorial in Canada to honour the more than 114,000 Canadians who never returned home from conflicts abroad and are buried on foreign soil or were lost at sea.
Today, Trigiani has two titles. He is president of Norstar Corp., a food packaging business based in Toronto. But he is also the president and CEO of the Never Forgotten National Memorial Foundation, the organization established to bring the memorial to life.
Trigiani is a reluctant salesman. For example, he declined the Star’s request for a photo. He said he wants the focus to be on the memorial, not on his efforts to get it built. But working away from the spotlight, those efforts are turning the vision into a reality.
In August, Parks Canada announced its support to have the memorial built along the Cabot Trail in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, which gets about 200,000 visitors a year.
The proposed site, just under one hectare, is at Green Cove on the eastern coastline on a rocky point.
“Facing east, visitors look in the direction of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial and the many battle sites, memorials and cemeteries of Europe, Asia, Africa and beyond,” reads a glossy booklet about the project.
“It’s going to be magnificent,” said Trigiani. “The views from the Cabot Trail are going to be spectacular.”
The highlight of the memorial will be the tall statue of a woman, with her arms outstretched toward Europe.
The statue is modelled on one at the Vimy Memorial, in France. Known as “Canada Bereft,” that female figure stands with head bowed as if in mourning. But the “Mother Canada” statue meant to grace Nova Scotia’s shores will be looking up, over the water and her arms open in a ready embrace.
“It’s beckoning, it’s welcoming. We took Canada Bereft and changed her pose from one of sorrow to one of hope and longing and remembrance,” Trigiani said.
Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie has signed on as an ambassador for the project. While Canada’s wartime sacrifices are already honoured by the National War Memorial in Ottawa and cenotaphs in towns and cities, MacKenzie said there is a place for this memorial to recognize a specific group — the soldiers who never came home.
“It’s all those folks. This specifically recognizes welcoming home, I say, the souls of those of those that are buried in foreign fields,” MacKenzie said.
“Because it has that specific (purpose) instead of just honouring sacrifice, that’s why I think it has legs in the imagination of the Canadian public,” said MacKenzie, who has been involved in the project for the last couple of years.
Parks Canada spokesperson Maria O’Hearn said the department was allowing the use of parkland for the memorial.
“The project is at the preliminary stages. Right now we’re working with the foundation,’ she said in an interview.
“The foundation is essentially is taking the vision to see how it could practically work on the ground.”
Once complete, it will be donated to the nation. Parks Canada will oversee the ongoing maintenance of the memorial, drawing on an endowment fund established by the foundation, she said.
The site will feature an interpretive centre where visitors can learn more about the lives of Canada’s war dead. A separate pavilion will pay tribute to those who waited on the home front, including women who stepped into the work force to keep vital war industries going, filling the vacancies left by men serving overseas.
From there, a walkway will lead towards the water’s edge. A circular area will list notable battles where Canadians have fought, from the First World War, the Second World War and the Korean War to more recent conflicts, such as Afghanistan.
Further out, on the rocky point, will be the statue itself and an observation deck at ocean’s edge.
The foundation will spend the upcoming year honing its business plan and getting fundraising efforts into gear. It’s estimated the memorial park will cost at least $30 million.
“There’s no reason why it can’t be funded by corporate and private Canada,” Trigiani said.
The goal is to have the memorial finished and ready for a grand unveiling July 1, 2017.
“A sunrise ceremony kicking off the 150th anniversary of Canada,” Trigiani said.
“The idea is that we’re able to celebrate the 150th (anniversary) of Canada because of the sacrifices that were made for us.”
