The Last Guns To Fire

 Picking up where I left off yesterday, more of the airplane nose cone art in the Museum dating back to the Second World War.

Another of the large canvases of war art: Canadians Arriving On The Rhine dates to 1918-19, and is by Inglis Sheldon-Williams.

Another striking work by the same artist, dating to 1920. This is The Return To Mons.

And this is No Man's Land, by Maurice Cullen, dating circa 1920.

Mons, Belgium is where the Canadians ended the First World War, part of the success of the Hundred Days that led to Allied victory. Canadian artillery crews presented two of their field guns to the citizens of the town, saying that they were the last of their guns to fire on the enemy. In 2018, to mark the centennial of the end of that war, the town returned this one to Canada. It now has its home here, where a visit to the Museum collection starts and ends. A fitting artifact in a place of honour.

There is one more spot that I've left for last. Memorial Hall is the second of two focal points of architecture in the Museum's design, a large room with a single artifact. When the body of an unknown Canadian soldier who had fallen in battle at Vimy Ridge was repatriated to Canada and placed in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, his gravestone came too. A marker was placed at his grave in France to note what had happened. 

The gravestone is in this room, hanging on the wall. Overhead windows on the opposite wall let in light. The entire Museum is aligned in such a way that on the 11th of November, at 11 in the morning, sunlight will shine through the windows and illuminate the stone.