At The Edge Of Peace

The Edge Of Peace was a multimedia presentation held in Confederation Park during the evenings leading up to Remembrance Day. A Montreal production company was behind this project, which used light, music, actors, and a series of spherical globes set up around the fountain. The presentation, marking the centennial of the end of World War One, was a fourteen minute show that ran through the evenings. In between, a few minutes would pass, and images were shown on the globes, both contemporary and period, such as this image of mothers commemorating lost sons.

The presentation weaves together a contemporary composer dealing with her own loss as she tries to compose a song paying tribute to those who fell in battle a century ago, with actors playing the part of several soldiers (including an indigenous soldier) from the war, reciting their words. The spoken words, alternating between English and French, were projected in both languages onto one of the globes throughout.

The first time I took in the show was the night it opened, one week before Remembrance Day, and I happened upon it as this image was projected- a soldier speaks of his war experience, superimposed with the haunting painting Ghosts Of Vimy Ridge, Walter Longstaff's painting that depicts the WWI battle site memorial at night, with ghosts rising up out of the ground. The painting is in the collection of the Canadian War Museum.

"They called, I answered" was a phrase commonly used through the presentation by these soldiers. The men of a century ago went through hell itself- and some of them, lying about their age- were more boys than men, forged through fire into soldiers, watching many of their own fall in battle.

The war's end is noted in the remarks by this soldier, relating a common experience: being in Mons, Belgium on the 11th of November, knowing that the cease fire was coming at 11 in the morning, waiting, biding your time with your friend, trying to keep the civilians from coming out of their homes... and hearing the crack of a sniper rifle minutes before the clock ran out, and knowing that while you were heading home, your friend was not. The sequence had a particular poignance.

The presentation ends with the composer having had found the right words to pay tribute, in a song that uses the name of the presentation as its title. She sings the song, with the soldiers projected onto another globe as chorus- check out my video here. I found the presentation moving, impressive, and very effective in conveying the cost of that war on those left behind. From the photographer's point of view, it also made for a compelling subject, just right for this time of year. Tomorrow I start turning my attention to this year's national service and Remembrance Day events.

The War Museum

I paid a visit to the Canadian War Museum on Remembrance Day. The Museum has been here at its location west of the downtown core since 2005 after outgrowing its previous location. It looks like a bunker or a massive plane, depending on angle and perspective, and is well suited to its collection.

Two particular spaces inside are critical from the design, and the Memorial Hall is one of them. It is an austere space containing one artifact: the headstone for the Unknown Soldier who lies now in his tomb at the War Memorial (his gravesite in France has another tombstone marking the location and the reason the body has been moved). The building is designed with this room as a focal point- on November 11th, at eleven in the morning, sun will shine through the overhead window and illuminate the headstone. As you can see, on Remembrance Day, the headstone attracts poppies.

There was an exhibition going on in the temporary exhibit hall about Vimy Ridge and the commemoration of war dead. It begins with a painting, William Longstaff's Ghosts Of Vimy Ridge, which depict ghosts rising up from the ridge below the Memorial at night.

This year has been the centennial year of the pivotal battle for Canadians during the First World War. The Memorial at the battle site, designed by Walter Allward, attracted a large crowd upon its opening, and is still a place for pilgrimage today.

Several of Allward's smaller scale sculptures were on display as part of this exhibition, moved over from their usual location in Regeneration Hall.

This caught my eye.

This is a model of the Memorial itself.

This is a calfskin robe done for a World War One corporal of the Kainai First Nation, Mike Mountain Horse. It depicts twelve deeds the Indigenous warrior carried out during the war.

This quilt was nearby.

I finish with two more of Allward's sculpture sets. 

The War Museum

My first stop on Canada Day was at the Canadian War Museum, where it was raining when I arrived (fortunately the rain let up by the time I left). The Museum re-located its collection to this spot west of the city core in 2005. The architecture resembles a bunker, or a bomber plane, depending on your perspective, and tells the story of Canadian military history from the earliest times to the modern day, both here and on the global stage, while also regularly staging temporary exhibits.

There is a temporary exhibit inside, Vimy: Beyond The Battle, concentrating on the commemoration of war dead, running until after Remembrance Day. This painting, which I haven't seen in several years, has been in the museum's vaults for some time, and was the first thing to greet the visitor stepping inside. William Longstaff painted Ghosts Of Vimy Ridge in 1931, several years before the memorial to the First World War battle was complete. His work dramatically lights up the memorial at night, with ghosts rising up from the shattered landscape. This was a theme in several of his paintings.

These are temporary crosses placed at graves at Vimy after the battle. Later the War Graves Commission would establish proper grave markers.

Walter Allward designed and oversaw the work on the Vimy Ridge Memorial. At his studio, he had created numerous slightly larger than life plaster casts that would be featured on the Memorial in their full scale. Those sculptures, depicting allegorical figures, are part of the War Museum's collection, and usually can be found in Regeneration Hall. Some of them had been moved over here for the exhibit.

A photograph on a display showed the poppies at the Tower of London display from 2014. Some of those ceramic poppies were in the display case alongside it.

This formal portrait was hanging here too. Lt.-Colonel Thain MacDowell is a painting by British war artist Harold Knight, depicting a young Canadian captain who received the Victoria Cross (and a promotion) for his bravery and leadership during the Battle Of Vimy Ridge.

This was a different work of art by Sarah Hatton, depicting the constellations above Vimy Ridge on the night of April 12th, 1917. I've included its explanatory panel with it.

I have more from this exhibit tomorrow, but I'll leave off with a panel depicting the finished sculptures on the Memorial itself.

Menin Gate

In my Wednesday post on Vimy Ridge, Grace from Perth Daily Photo mentioned another work by William Longstaff, Menin Gate At Midnight (Ghosts Of Menin Gate), painted in 1927, depicting spectral ghosts around the monument in Belgium. The painting is in the collection of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. I had seen the painting before, which is reproduced here from the Memorial's website. The Gate itself is a massive memorial to Commonwealth dead of the First World War, with the names of over fifty thousand soldiers whose bodies were never identified or found. Each evening, the citizens of Ypres observe a ceremony here, with buglers sounding the Last Post.

Australian War Memorial collection

It turns out that Longstaff's painting has arrived here in Ottawa on loan to the War Museum for an exhibit, opening in early November. I plan on seeing the exhibit, of course. I can certainly see Longstaff's spectral influences in the painting, a theme he revisited in other works, including his Ghosts Of Vimy Ridge. For more on Longstaff and the Menin Gate, click this link.

Ghosts At Vimy

This is not one of my shots, but instead is taken from the museum's catalogue site, since the painting in question is currently not on display. The painting is called The Ghosts Of Vimy Ridge, by the Australian artist William Longstaff. It depicts Walter Allward's memorial in France at night, with the ghosts of the dead rising from the ruined earth around the ridge. Longstaff painted this at some point in 1929-1930, years before the memorial was finished in 1936, while the land still bore the scars of the battle, but he knew what the finished monument would look like. The canvas had been displayed in Regeneration Hall for several years. At present, it is in the vaults for awhile, as another Vimy-related painting is hanging in its place. I have seen Ghosts Of Vimy Ridge many times, and it is huge... and haunting to behold. It's one of my favourite works of art.

Canadian War Museum Collection