New Starting Point: Necropolis Now! A Tale of Monumental Urban Folly . . .
. . . or How MacKenzie King learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Totalitarians.
Photo: Proposed location of the Victims of Communism Memorial
Stop me if you’ve heard this story.
It’s the story of a huge monument to those who died in foreign lands—a public memorial looking for a final resting place. It is a tale of a misappropriated public space that was supposed to become something else. It is a story of a leader playing God with a capital city and pandering to the demands of a voting base with deep wounds—and (not incidentally) deep pockets. It is a tale of a single-minded tyrant ignoring cries of dismay from loud reporters, an angry mayor, and countless experts—and acting over the objections of the very organization that was supposed to be in charge of planning such things. It is a tale of well-meaning decisions that led to the senseless killing of a vibrant, and important, urban place in Ottawa.
The monument in question? The National War Memorial, and the leader? William Lyon McKenzie King.
Surprised? Well so was local storyteller and gadfly-at-large Dennis Van Staalduinen, who will lead this two-hour walk to trace the degrees of separation between King, the idealistic bachelor and wannabe urbanist, his giant monument (which Van Staalduinen really likes), and the even bigger space-killer destined for the Courthouse lawn further to the West (about which Van Staalduinen will politely decline to express an opinion for the moment). Along the way, we’ll conjure the bones of a few famous dead Europeans, and discover the rough but vibrant city that once thrived along Wellington Street – including two houses full of “friendless women,” a candy factory, and two breweries—all on the same block! And yes, we’ll talk about how political choices and priorities from on high shape how we perceive, enjoy, and occasionally dread, parts of our city. How much death can one city take? Let’s find out together.
