Monumental mistake? Victims of Communism Memorial seems too vague to be poignant
Kelly Egan, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: December 16, 2014, Last Updated: December 16, 2014 5:36 PM EST
Monuments are bound to be divisive, but they should not cry out for mockery.
This is the deeper problem, I suspect, with the proposed Memorial to the Victims of Communism. While the location is suspect (agreed) and the size is eye-popping (a valid point), it is the very concept that lacks sharp definition.
The monument would pay tribute to 100 million victims of communist regimes, from Lenin to Mao, from Armenia to Cambodia to Cuba to Germany to Korea, Poland and Tibet and Vietnam (about 30 countries in all) and, obviously, spanning different eras and even centuries.
The death of one man is a tragedy, the deaths of a million are a statistic: so goes the quote attributed to Stalin, wrongly we’re told, and ironically. But the point is made. Can a well-intentioned individual possibly relate to this work of slanted concrete in a meaningful way? Say what you will about our National War Memorial (conceived after the First World War), but at least we were all talking about the same war.
(The first time I saw the war memorial as a child, I looked at the copper green figures around the wheeled artillery and asked my father, “Which one is Papa?” as his father had served in the First. The monument, even to a child, was obviously rooted in a time and place, in some great epic thing that hardened men had to sort out.)
We might study -isms, but we relate to people. In the newspaper this week, there is a death notice for a little girl named Amanda Zhi Ye Martin, who was born in 2005 and, sometimes, wore flowers in her dark hair, smiling. “In November 2005, Amanda was left by a roadside, found by a passerby and then taken to the Foshan Nanhai Social Welfare Institute, where she remained remained until she was 17 months old.”
She died on a Caribbean cruise, from an existing health condition, presumably with generous Canadian family members who had taken her in, given her a fighting chance at life. A victim of Communist China? I don’t know, but certainly a tragedy we can all relate to. In some form, she will have her own statue, as she should.
How will the monument to communism speak of the 100 million? With tiny squares, all identical. When the concept’s umbrella is this big, maybe it’s all you’re left with: lots and lots of raindrops, all the same.
It is a shame, too, that the legitimate argument that we should recognize the Canadian links to this ideologically inspired suffering — genocide, even — is being mixed up with side issues or just laughed at. (What about victims of capitalism, socialism, fascism, or even journalism, the wags have noted; -isms don’t kill people, maniacs kill people, etc, etc. …)
And, good grief, what of the National Capital Commission in this saga? When it comes to monuments in particular, it looks like a Crown corporation that spends its time “planning” until someone tells it what to do.
In September 2012, out of the blue, a massive semi-spherical monument was unveiled at the corner of the Sir John A. Macdonald Parkway — a road suddenly renamed, by the way — and Island Park Drive. Even while under construction, the federal government would not say what it was, as though a state secret.
And, behold, it was a monument to fallen diplomats around the world, in particular to the Turkish military attaché, Col. Atilla Altikat, who was gunned down only steps away in 1982.
We have lots of places to put new monuments in the capital. But as the feds noted in many planning documents, the so-called Parliamentary precinct is not actually that big. There is no expansion room on the east side and limited options to the west. This is probably the biggest empty site from the Hill to the Portage Bridge. Obviously, the Hill and its associated functions need to grow. It’s Canada. We plan on being here awhile.
So we’re left with the idea this is a critically important political statement, so urgent for Canada we need to juxtapose — on the capital’s main street — an anti-Communist slab with the Supreme Court: tyranny versus liberty, the gulag versus the rule of law, dictators versus democrats.
This, on our front door?
You know, this Hill gang goes long stretches when they ignore Ottawa, the city, then frantically monkey around with all the chess pieces (NAC, science museum, LeBreton, Wellington Street). Some days, you wonder which is worse.
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email
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Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columni...-memorial-seems-too-vague-to-be-poignant
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