City Daily Photo Theme Day: Power

The first day of each month is a theme day for members of City Daily Photo, and for February that theme is Power. Have a look at how others are interpreting the theme right here.

I am in the midst of a series from the Canadian War Museum, from a visit made in November. The material today felt entirely appropriate for the theme. This is a model of the National War Memorial, built in commemoration of the First World War and dedicated in the months preceding the Second World War. It occupies the heart of the Royal Canadian Legion Hall Of Honour, which features exhibits about the commemoration of war and military service. Fitting to feature today, as the events of this weekend in the city cast a dark shadow on the Memorial downtown.

 

A short way beyond, a passageway leads towards Regeneration Hall, one of the focal points of the Museum. This passageway is typically lined with rotating art or panels on a given subject. At the moment its subject is a powerful and moving one: the portrait art of Elaine Goble. Her subjects are veterans and others who lived through the Second World War. Some of them are seen in a composite here.

The Sailor Weds The Wren- Portrait Of Joan Amy Voller and Keith Voller is a dual portrait of a couple on their wedding day and decades later. Both served: he in the British Navy and she in the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service. I remember chatting with her on several Remembrance Days near a display case in the Second World War portion of the museum that contained her uniform.

After The Holocaust: A Family Album depicts Valerie Blau and Mendel Good, survivors of the Holocaust who married in Canada after the war. They are surrounded by members of their family in this work, many of whom perished in the Holocaust.

Portrait Of Gwen is a dual painting of Gwen Paget, who also served in the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service.

She Wears The Bletchley Medal is a portrait of Doris Hope, who spent the war intercepting German U-Boat signals, part of the work cracking the Enigma code.

Some of you will remember this painting from last fall, in a different spot in the Museum after it had been first unveiled. Normandy Warrior is a powerful portrait of Philip Favel, a First Nations soldier who served from Normandy through to the end, and worked for equal compensation and treatment of indigenous veterans.