A walk down Wellington Street: Exploring Ottawa’s contentious communism memorial
An artist rendering of the proposed memorial.
Parliament Hill, the
Supreme Court of Canada … and the Memorial to the Victims of Communism.
Strange as it sounds, that will be the sequence along Confederation
Boulevard in Ottawa if the capital’s newest memorial goes into the
ground this year as planned.
The monument could be the second largest in Ottawa, almost matching the
National War Memorial in scale, and its planned site lies adjacent to the
Supreme Court. It has raised a vigorous debate in the capital and in design
circles because of its location, its design and even the process that is
bringing it into existence.The memorial is imagined as a tribute to tens of millions of people, including those who fled communist countries for Canada. It’s proponent is a non-profit group called Tribute to Liberty.
Related: Tory-linked charity behind monument unscathed by CRA auditing
Members of the Harper government have publicly supported the memorial project since 2010. In the past two years, the government has also moved responsibility for selecting the sites and designing commemorative projects away from the National Capital Commission and into the hands of two federal ministries. Critics say these actions opened the door for the nation’s capital to be altered by political whim.
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