Monument Analysis: Memorial Bronze Statues in Victoria’s Downtown
As Dr. McGuire has written on the Anth 392 website, the dead are all around us. This is not to say that there are bodies piling up in the streets, but that those who are not now living survive in our memories, in our cultural consciousness and through physical markers and reminders in the world around us. In the downtown core of Victoria, BC, there are memorial monuments commemorating events, groups and individuals. This short study will look at bronze memorial statues that the authors ‘discovered’ during what can be called a field survey of Victoria’s downtown area. The statues, seven in total, are of individuals deemed worthy of memorialization. There is an annotated map of the downtown area of Victoria, showing the locations and photos of each monument included with this study.
Not all of us can be remembered through grand monuments on public display. In fact, it would appear that only exceptional people would have that honor. The statues in our data set are mostly of these exceptional elites. But perhaps the term elite does not always apply. In front of the Legislative Building we see Queen Victoria, tall and regal, holding her scepter and very much the image of an Empress. But down the street and only about 200 metres away we see a bronze statue of the humble artist, Emily Carr, seated with one of her dogs and her monkey named Woo. Both women are very important to our city’s past and present identity and both women are remembered in bronze, although in their respective lives, they came from entirely different stations. Emily Carr achieved her status as an artist, defining for us the world of the Pacific Northwest through toil, with paint and brush. Queen Victoria, in contrast, was ascribed her royal status through right of birth and was the Empress to half the world and gave our town its name. These two figures were found worthy of memorial via public monuments because of their place in our social memory. It is interesting that such opposites of women should be memorialized in the same way. This reflects our city’s modern values, in that a humble painter should be found in bronze, like a Queen.
Several of the statues in our data set were in memory of military dead. It is important to note that these monuments were not dedicated to individuals, but to regiments or groups of fallen soldiers. In an article focusing on a Soviet war memorial in Estonia, author Siobhan Kattago (2009) writes ‘‘War memorials are cultural symbols reflecting the human instinct for aggression towards one another. While they may have many different interpretations, all war memorials are attempts to make sense of the senseless: violent death at the hands of others.’’ This is a stark and generalized view, but it is not without merit. The WW2/Korean memorial is of a soldier with fixed bayonet raised and a fallen comrade at his feet. This is a graphic reminder of violence and loss. But we can compare this to the Navy Memorial entitled ‘Homecoming’ which has a serviceman on one knee about to embrace his (presumed) daughter, who has a happy puppy dancing beside her. He has a suitcase beside him, informing us that he has been away. This warm bronze monument invokes different war related emotions; separation and family ties, but it is also a reunion, making something whole again. Kataggo’s assessment of war memorials may leave out some of these aspects of the war experience. ‘Homecoming’ puts into bronze the parts of the war experience or even military life that our society may prefer to remember. Memorial monuments, it can be argued, reflect a culture’s selective memory.
It is worth noting that First Nations are not represented in bronze memorials in the downtown core of Victoria. The distinctly European idea of using bronze as the medium for monument statues perhaps underscores the colonial divide in the founding of Victoria. A statue of Captain Cook, explorer, is found at the upper level of the inner harbour concourse. Cook embodies the British Empire and its often-disastrous contact with indigenous people, worldwide. It could be considered a political statement to have such a symbol of the colonial era in such a prominent place downtown. Monuments are placed where they are for good reasons, one would think.
In consideration of the above statement, Victoria relies on tourism as an economic staple and that has had more to due with the placement of the monuments in our data set than politics or status. In such a small city, there are only a few main thoroughfares to place a monument where it can be seen. It makes sense to have the Queen Victoria monument in front of the Legislative Building, as the reigning Monarch is our Head of State (actually, the Governor General is the Head of State, but…) and Emily Carr, now seemingly reduced to a municipal mascot, is placed in a photo-friendly location, with the Fairmont Empress Hotel and tulip beds behind her. This speaks to the modern socio-economic role that monuments and memory can play.
The aim of our field work was to establish the memorial landscape of downtown Victoria, focus-in on a specific type of memorial (we originally aimed for memorial murals but found too few to pursue that aspect of memorial urban art) and within a bounded area (the downtown core) establish a data set to be analyzed. The author feels that these objectives were met. To conclude this study, a quote from the late Tommy Douglas, Canadian politician, fits well into the analysis of memorial statues and their meaning in a Victoria, BC context; ‘‘I don’t mind being a symbol but I don’t want to become a monument. There are monuments all over the Parliament Buildings and I’ve seen what pigeons do to them.’’
References
Kattago, S. (2009), War Memorials and the Politics of Memory: the Soviet War Memorial in Tallinn. Constellations, 16: 150–166.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/monuments.html
Annotated Map of Downtown Victoria
View Downtown Bronze Memorials (Art) in a larger map
