Our 98-year-old cenotaph needs restoration (5 photos)

Sault Ste. Marie City Council will be asked tonight to help Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25 pay for restoring and cleaning the cenotaph in front of the courthouse at 426 Queen St. East.

Ninety-eight years old and 22 feet high, the downtown landmark is a designated heritage property.

Its cornerstone was laid in August 1923 by Algoma Steel founder Francis Hector Clergue, with tokens of the commemorated soldiers placed inside the stone.

The finished monument was unveiled in September 1924 by Governor General Lord Byng, a war hero whose wife donated the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy presented each year to the National Hockey League player considered "to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability".

The planned cenotaph restoration work includes:

• cleaning stone work
• polishing lead lettering
• cleaning bronze statue
• applying wax to prevent leaching

Legion officials will ask the city for $3,000 toward the estimated $4,350 needed to clean and restore the monument.

Sault Ste. Marie's cenotaph was designed by Alfred Howell, an English-born artist who also designed bronze monuments for St. John (New Brunswick), Oshawa, and Guelph – all commemorating sacrifices of Canadian soldiers in World War I.

Names of all Algoma residents lost in WWI were carved on the cenotaph's base, with fallen soldiers from WW2 and the Korean War added later.

Howell was selected for the job from seven other Canadian sculptors.

The bronze statue that crowns the cenotaph depicts the “Triumph of Right over the God of War.”

'War' is depicted by a crouching man under a shield.

'Right' is presented as a draped woman wielding a sword in one hand and a sprig of maple leaves in the other.

One unusual feature of Sault Ste. Marie's cenotaph is this inscription written specially for Sault Ste. Marie by Rudyard Kipling, the Nobel Prize-winning colonialist poet:

From little towns, in a far land, we came,

To save our honour and a world aflame;

By little towns, in a far land, we sleep,

And trust those things we won

To you to keep.

J.W. Curran, then editor of the Sault Star, is credited with persuading Kipling to write the inscription, in a letter described by one Toronto newspaper as a “masterpiece...a daring idea [demonstrating] the persuasive skill of J.W. Curran."

An earlier restoration of the cenotaph was done in 1992.

City Council is also expected to approve tonight a second grant to Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25 – $2,200 toward the cost repairing a sandstone monument at 96 Great Northern Road acknowledging the Wawanosh Home for Girls, one of the first residential schools for girls in Canada.

The cleaning and re-pointing work is one component of a larger project including a new pathway to the monument to make it more accessible.

In one other matter, city councillors will be asked tonight to name these 28 properties to the Sault Ste. Marie Heritage Register as listed properties;

• 286 John Street
• 52 Trelawne Avenue (16 Rosedale)
• 279 Cathcart Street
• 136 Pilgrim Street
• 59 Fauquier Street (Hamilton House)
• 69 Borron Avenue
• 184 Pim Street (Marshall Apartments)
• 19 Summit Avenue
• 182 Church Street
• 3 Summit Avenue
• 90 Ontario Avenue
• 188 Church Street
• 11 Summit Avenue
• 372 Bruce Street
• 1019 Queen Street
• 1062 Queen Street
• 508, 510, 512 Queen Street East (Elizabeth Wilcox Building)
• 175 Queen Street East (King’s Apartments)
• 478-480 Queen Street East
• 484-488 Queen Street East (Taylor Block)
• 618-620 Queen Street East
• 667-669 Queen Street East
• 754 Queen Street East
• 801, 803, 805 Queen Street East (McCormick Block)
• 95 Huron Street, Pulp Tower
• 107 Huron Street, Yard Locker & Board Mill
• 130 John Street (former St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church)
• 136 John Street (former church hall)
• 221-223 Brown Street

Tonight's City Council meeting will be livestreamed on SooToday starting at 4:30 p.m.