If Ye Break Faith With Us

Today is Remembrance Day, a particularly significant one as it was a century ago today that the guns fell silent across the battlefields of Europe and the Great War came to an end. I will be taking in the national service at the War Memorial and visiting the Canadian War Museum as well today. Have a look at my writer's blog for yesterday's post, as it also features this location with shots from 2016.

Green Island lies east of the downtown core, where the Rideau River splits into two and joins the Ottawa River at the Rideau Falls. On the north side of Sussex Drive, the land is parkland, and there are a number of monuments placed in this parkland, most of them military in nature. I came up this way on  Thanksgiving in October while taking fall photos, and decided to focus on two of the monuments for Remembrance Day. The first is the National Artillery Memorial, which originally stood in Major's Hill Park but which has been here for years. A field gun stands beside the wall, which includes inscriptions in English and French- the French text of the main inscription is on a plaque over on the left side. 

Beside it is another monument, more recent, placed here in 2015. It pays tribute to the Canadian soldier, doctor, and poet John McCrae, who wrote the poem In Flanders Fields after the death of a fellow soldier in World War One.

The monument depicts a larger than McCrae sitting, with poem in hand and poppies in red as part of the statue. It was created by artist Ruth Abernethy, who has a particular gift with sculpture- she's responsible for the Oscar Peterson sculpture at the National Arts Centre. This statue has a twin- another one by the artist is at the civic museum in Guelph, which was McCrae's home town growing up in southern Ontario. His family home there is preserved today as well.