Let's see how Louise Arbour handles unveiling this war monument | Opinion
Randy Boswell: The next Governor General said her Quebec team was “cheated” when their design wasn't chosen for the monument to Canada’s Afghan mission.
Author of the article:By Randy Boswell
Published May 08, 2026
It’s only been days since former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour was named Canada’s next governor general. And it’ll be weeks before she’s sworn in and takes up residence at Rideau Hall.
But it’s clear there will be at least one awkward moment during Arbour’s time as Canada’s 31st viceregal representative and commander-in-chief of the Canadian Armed Forces.
At LeBreton Flats, just a day before Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Arbour would become Canada’s next de facto head of state, three federal Liberal cabinet ministers and a host of other dignitaries finally broke ground on the long-anticipated National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan.
And when the commemorative site is completed and unveiled sometime in late 2028 or early 2029, it can be expected that the new governor general — in her capacity as the symbolic head of Canada’s military — will preside over the dedication of the monument.
The awkward bit? In a 2023 interview with the Citizen, Arbour said the design of the monument was chosen after federal officials opted to “cheat” her and the other members of a Quebec design team who had won a juried competition for the $3-million project that was later overturned by government fiat.
Instead, an Alberta team’s design for the monument — the one now being built — was picked after an unscientific online survey showed that it was more popular among respondents than the Quebec team’s proposal.
The Quebec team, including strategic adviser Arbour, had designed a conceptual installation featuring two large walls erected at angles that formed a framed view of the Peace Tower to the east and Canadian War Museum to the west.
The Alberta team’s design, led by Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation artist Adrian Stimson, includes walls inscribed with the names of Canadian military personnel who died in Afghanistan and a “circular, sacred space of safety, a ‘home base’ of reflection, memory and contemplation.” A central stone circle features four bronze flak jackets and helmets draped on crosses.
Between 2001 and 2014, more than 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces served in Afghanistan; 158 Canadian soldiers and seven Canadian civilians died there. Thousands of other veterans were wounded physically or left psychologically scarred.
It was Arbour, according to Quebec team leader Renée Daoust, who had helped inspire their design by invoking the famous line from Canadian musician Leonard Cohen’s Anthem: “There is a crack, a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”
Arbour explained at the time that she had travelled to Afghanistan in her capacity as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights between 2004 and 2008, was “still in contact with people I met there” and shared with fellow design team members her knowledge and experience of Canada’s mission in the country — “about women’s rights and human rights,” the Canadian presence in Kandahar, and more.
In other comments she made at the time about the way the monument design choice was handled by the Liberal government of then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Arbour slammed the outcome as an “undemocratic” and “un-Canadian” political intervention to negate an official jury’s decision.
“It’s such an insult to people’s talent and efforts to just cheat,” she told the Citizen in November 2023. “I think there should be a lot of concern about the integrity of procurement processes by the federal government … The best remedy would be for the government to reverse its decision — which was ill-advised to put it mildly — and to follow the procedures that it had put in place.”
Arbour’s views on the Trudeau government’s ham-fisted management of the monument’s design were echoed by many others in Canada’s architecture and artistic communities. Opposition MPs also questioned the integrity of the process.
And, honestly, what’s the point of having a formal competition with clear rules and a carefully appointed jury — including representatives of veterans — if it can all be thrown out in the end? The Quebec design team later accepted a $100,000 compensation payment from the government over the botched competition.
Arbour’s sense of outrage about what happened aligned with the principled approach one would expect from an extraordinary jurist and internationally renowned defender of the rule of law.
An inspired choice for our next GG? For sure. She may be the only living Canadian with a more impressive resumé on the world stage than Carney himself.
But happenstance appears likely in a few years to put her in the uncomfortable position of smiling politely and finding just the right words to capture the poignancy of a major new Canadian war memorial that she personally views as the product of a tainted, unjust and “un-Canadian” process.
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/louise-arbour-afghan-war-monument
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