It’s time to commemorate Sir Winston Churchill in Calgary
Mark Milke, Calgary Herald, August 24, 2022
(See the Calgary Herald column with more pictures of the Churchill statue here.)
A statue of the famed wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill will soon grace downtown Calgary, a gift from the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Calgary, a charity founded in 1966 by then Calgary Herald publisher Frank Swanson, his wife Vera and others.
In partnership with the province, the Churchill statue will be unveiled next spring on the south lawn of McDougall Centre, the provincial government’s southern Alberta “home base.” It will join another sculpture there that also memorializes Second World War sacrifice, the Airman Memorial Statue.
At 1.5 times the size of British wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill, the plasticine figure is ready for shipment to a foundry for bronzing. The finished statue, donated by the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Calgary, will be erected on the grounds of the McDougall Centre in Calgary next spring. jpg
The Churchill statue is now being bronzed. At 1.5 times Churchill’s height, it is a work of art, created by famed Edmonton sculptor Danek Mozdzenski, whose past work includes sculptures of the late Alberta Lieut.-Gov. Lois Hole, jazz musician Clarence Horatio Miller and Alberta suffragist Nellie McClung.
New art is one reason why we are pleased to loan it to the people of Alberta in perpetuity. There are other reasons why all Canadians should commemorate Churchill. They include how he was the 20th century’s most critical statesman and one who cherished the beauty and potential of Alberta.
Without Churchill’s ascension to prime minister of our wartime ally, Great Britain, in May 1940, and over the objections of those who wanted that country to negotiate a treaty with Nazi Germany, the postwar world would have looked starkly different: a Europe carved up between the two murderous regimes of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, an Asia largely conquered by and subjected to Imperial Japan, and democracies that survived relative tiny islands of freedom in a world of tyranny.
That wartime alliance is one reason why we should commemorate Churchill in Calgary. A local reason is how much earlier, in August 1929, Churchill spent a month in Canada and was enamoured with Alberta’s majestic scenery which he would later memorialize with several paintings.
After disembarking at the CP Railway station in Calgary on Aug. 24, 1929, where Churchill would soon speak to an overflow crowd of 750 people at the Palliser Hotel, the then politician-journalist-author had his first glimpse of the Canadian Rockies, pronouncing them “glorious.” Later, at Lake Louise, Churchill described it as a “truly enchanting scene,” a sentiment repeated at Banff, Emerald Lake and Radium. He would later write to his wife Clementine that the Rockies were “Twenty Switzerlands rolled into one.”
Also, yet relevant for Albertans, Churchill visited Turner Valley, where Alberta’s nascent oil industry was just getting started. Churchill saw both the potential of the industry while also frustrated by the lack of support for it in the distant imperial capital of London.
While at Turner Valley, Churchill’s son Randolph complained both about the hellish-looking industrial vista and derided the local oil men for “their lack of culture.” But Churchill, who well knew that entrepreneurs must first create an economy from which the arts can later be funded, retorted that “Cultured people are merely the glittering scum which floats upon the deep river of production.”
According to Bradley Tolppanen, who chronicled the 1929 visit, Randolph thought his father’s retort was “damn good.”
In 2022, one must address reflexive critics who argue we should not celebrate historical figures given their views do not perfectly align with ours today. That’s an impossible standard. We are not yet perfect and future generations will critique some of our 21st-century notions.
Churchill was a man of his time and also ahead of it. He advanced early social 20th-century social reforms such as a minimum wage for garment workers, unemployment insurance and pensions. He opposed the unjust treatment of the Muslim minority in India and opposed antisemitism everywhere. Also, during the war, when the U.S. military requested that the British segregate black and white soldiers in British establishments, Churchill flatly refused.
Churchill’s manifold accomplishments, which contributed to a freer, more flourishing world, and his admiration for all things Albertan, are why the Churchill Society of Calgary is delighted to donate this work of art for all to soon view.
Mark Milke is president of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Calgary. For more information about the Churchill statue project, see www.churchillcalgary.ca.