The Valiants Memorial in downtown Ottawa. [Marlene Hilton Moore]
When Veterans’ Week entered its second day on Nov. 6, 2006, Ottawa’s residents and visitors woke to find the city’s commemorative landscape enriched. Just 24 hours before, on a Sunday, then-governor general Michaëlle Jean led an unveiling ceremony within sight of the National War Memorial.
A new monument comprising 14 life-sized figures from Canadian military history—nine busts and five statues, collectively anchored by a wall of remembrance—was at last revealed. It had been a collaborative project estimated at $1.1 million, a homage realized through the efforts of many, not least sculptors John McEwen and Marlene Hilton Moore. Having immortalized these men and women in bronze, their joint work became the Valiants Memorial.
Isaac Brock [Marlene Hilton Moore]
Paul Triquet [Marlene Hilton Moore]
Laura Secord [Marlene Hilton Moore]
Those commemorated were selected not only for individual acts of courage, tenacity and derring-do, but for what they represented. Spanning some 325 years of conflict, from early colonial confrontations to the world wars, the faces of Indigenous, francophone and anglophone icons—each an icon in their own right—stare out near the top of Sappers Staircase beside Confederation Square. Many are names of unquestionable resonance—Isaac Brock, Thayendanegea, Laura Secord, Arthur Currie, Paul Triquet.
“Their heroics and their humanity will live forever.”
Arthur Currie [Marlene Hilton Moore]
Others embody overlooked, yet no less valiant, deeds.
All, however, stand testament to an emergent Canada in times of great upheaval—and to those who, in one way or another, helped forge it.
“The legacy of the Valiants Memorial,” artist Hilton Moore told Legion Magazine, “belongs to the Valiants themselves. Their heroics and their humanity will live forever. The beauty and richness of the bronze holds the living presence of these military figures in our hearts and minds through today, tomorrow and always.”
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