The Mother Canada project is a controversial eight-storey war memorial planned for Green Cove in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. The plan has been proposed by the Never Forgotten National Memorial Foundation which has been set up to raise $25 million dollars to develop the site.
The project has received strong Harper government support with the donation of the park land and $100,000 from its park budget.
The Mother Canada statue is a cloaked female with her arms outstretched towards the Atlantic Ocean.The plan also includes parking for 300 vehicles, a restaurant, souvenir shop and an interpretive centre.
The war memorial is intended to honour the country’s soldiers who died overseas. But this Colossus of Wars will not bring back the dead claims Valerie Bird a 93-year old war veteran. “I think the idea of this horrible thing offends veterans....I find it difficult to find words.This is a monstrosity," added Bird.
The Mother Canada statue has been called "offensively tasteless" and a "hubristically arrogant act of arrogant unoriginality” by the Globe and Mail.
A citizens group called Friends of Green Cove strongly opposes the project. Sean Howard, who is a spokesman for the group and a political science professor at Cape Breton University, accuses the government of supporting a monument of a “kitsch glorification of war”. There are also environmental concerns that the development will destroy the iconic ocean lookout and ecological integrity of the national park.
We should all oppose this project for three reasons:
it is a glorification of war;
it is a waste of tax-payer dollars, and
the memorial does not fit the national park's purpose as a steward of nature.
Please SIGN this petition - Say NO to the Mother Canada statue.
