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By the end of WW1, the Canadian Association of Trained Nurses, now the Canadian Nurses Association, looked for a way and place to commemorate the army nurses who lost their lives during the war. Their memorial committee fundraised $38,000 from Canadian nurses, received government approval to place it on Parliament Hill, and chose the Canadian sculptor, George William Hill. Hill created the 6 tons relief sculpture from a single piece of white Italian Carrera marble in Italy and shipped it to Canada in 1926; it was unveiled on August 24th, 1926. The memorial presents the history of nurses in Canada, from the arrival of the sisters from France to found Hôtel Dieu in Québec City in 1639 to the end of the First World War. The memorial is the biggest piece hung on the Hall of Honour in the Centre Block, which resides between the House of Commons and the Senate. The plaque at the base of the memorial, which is also called the Nurses of Canada Memorial, reads: “Erected by the nurses of Canada in remembrance of their sisters who gave their lives in the Great War, Nineteen Fourteen-Eighteen, and to perpetuate a noble tradition in the relations of the old world and the new. Led by the Spirit of Humanity across the seas woman, by her tender ministrations to those in need, has given to the world the example of heroic service embracing three centuries of Canadian history.” Also on Parliament Hill is the monument Women Are Persons, commemorating the Famous Five, who led the campaign for equal voting rights for women in Canada in general and the fight to allow women to get elected to the Canadian Senate in particular. Read more about it here. Read more...

On the morning of May 20th, 1932, the pioneering pilot Amelia Earhart departed from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, Canada, flying her single-engine Lockheed Vega 5B aircraft, becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and the second person to achieve this milestone. After 14 hours, 56 minutes of flying in terrible weather and mechanical problems, Earhart landed in Culmore, north of Londonderry, Northern Ireland. This accomplishment brought her worldwide fame and publicity and challenged her to break more records. Amelia Earhart (1897-1939) was an American aviator. Although she was not the first female pilot in the US, she completed many firsts as an aviator and as a woman, and she is still considered one of the most famous aviators of all time. In 1937, while completing a flight around the globe, planning to become the first woman to do so, she and her navigator disappeared. An extensive and expensive search did not find any trace of them, and two years later, they were declared dead. In 2007, seventy-five years after Earhart left for her flight, a statue was unveiled in the Spirit of Harbour Grace Park, commemorating her achievement and legacy as a pioneer aviator and fearless woman. Lorne Rostotski designed the site, Roger Pike funded the statue, and the Canadian sculptor Luben Boykov created it. The original Lockheed Vega 5B aircraft is on view at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Read more...

Unveiled on July 1st, 1992, by Queen Elizabeth herself, the statue is the first equestrian statue of Her Majesty in the world and it was dedicated in honor of her 40th year of ruling and Canada’s 125th anniversary. The statue stood till 2019 on the east side of Parliament Hill. Due to archeology and other work, it was temporarily relocated to the roundabout in front of Rideau Hall’s main gate, the official residence of the Governor-General, the queen representative in Canada. Made by sculptor Jack Harman, the 4-meter statue stands on a 3.7 meters tall granite base. It depicts Queen Elizabeth riding astride on her horse Centenial, whom she received as a gift from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in commemoration of their 100th anniversary. Queen Elisabeth II (1926) was born Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary to the Duke and Duchess of York. In 1936, her father succeeded the throne, and the 10-years-old princess became second in line to rule the kingdom. As a member of the royal family, she took on various royal duties, and during WW2, she volunteered in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, serving as a mechanic and driver. After her father died in 1952, she became the Queen of Great Britain, head of the Commonwealth, and the queen regnant of the seven independent Commonwealth countries, including Canada. On August 2nd, 1973, on her visit to Canada, Her Majesty was invited to select a horse from the RCMP stables. The chosen horse, then named Jerry, stayed with the RCMP for a few more years, and on May 15th, 1977, the horse was presented to the Queen at Windsor Castle and was renamed Centenial. To this date, it was the second of eight horses that were presented to the queen by the RCMP. Also located on Parliament Hill are the Queen Victoria statue, which was unveiled in 1901, and the monument Women are Persons which commemorates the Famous Five group who fought for Canadian women voting rights. Read more...

On August 8th, 2021, the Dutch Canadian Club Edmonton dedicated the statue of Anne Frank. It is a replica of the 1960 sculpture by Dutch sculptor Pieter d’Hont which was the first statue of Anne Frank ever created. The unveiling ceremony was attended by Dutch representatives, veterans, public officials, and Jewish community members. It was live-streamed to the Netherlands, where a bell tolled for 2 minutes at the same time as Edmonton. Tulips and other flowers from the Netherlands surround the sculpture, and next to it are two informative plaques. The statue pays tribute to the Holocaust victims and Canada’s role in liberating the Netherlands from Nazi tyranny in 1945. Edmonton’s Light Horse Park is named after the South Alberta Light Horse Regiment, which fought during World War I and II. The park went through a makeover in 2011, intending to create a place for those who have been affected by war or conflict. Anne Frank (1929-1945) was a teenage girl when her family went into hiding following the Nazis’ invasion of the Netherlands. During that time, she documented her life in a notebook she got on her 13th birthday. In August 1944, the German police discovered them, sending them all to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Martha died in a concentration camp only a few weeks before the war ended. Her father, Otto, was the only family member to survive. After the war, he returned to Amsterdam and received many papers a friend was able to save for him. Among them was Anne’s diary. In 1947, The Diary of a Young Girl was published and became one of the most famous depositions of life under the Nazi regime. Click here to see all the statues of Anne Frank in the world. Read more...

A standing bronze statue of Émilie Gamelin stands inside the Berri-UQAM metro station. One of the largest and busiest metro stations in Montreal. Outside the station is the Place Émilie-Gamelin, a small urban park that stands in the place where once stood the Asylum of Providence, a facility that Gamelin founded to support the elder and poor. Émilie Gamelin (1800–1851) was a Montreal native, who lost many of her family members throughout her life, and chose to dedicate her life to assisting others. Her mother died when she was 4, her father when she was 14, and 9 out of her 15 siblings died before adulthood. She was married for four years before her husband died. Together they had three children, but none survived to adulthood. As a widow and childless, she found comfort in charity work. She started taking care of elderly and lonely women at her home and later in a shelter she rented. Within a few years, they moved to a bigger space, and she co-founded the congregation of the Sisters of Providence. As of 2021, the Sisters of Providence serve in 9 countries, including Canada and the United States. In 2001 Pope John Paul II beatified her. The monument was created by Raoul in 1999, celebrating the bicentenary of her birth. It depicts her with her nun dress, walking, carrying a basket with food, about to deliver it to those in need. Read more...

At the entrance of Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal, the first hospital in the city, founded by Jeanne Mance (1606-1673) in 1642, stands a bronze statue of her. Mance was in the first group of settlers who arrived from France to the Island of Montréal. As a nurse, her official role as one of Montréal’s founders was to establish the hospital for the early settlers. She traveled back and forth to France several times, fundraising money, recruiting more settlers, and bringing three hospital sisters. She dedicated her life to the city and the development of the hospital. In the statue, she is leaning forward, supporting a wounded colonist. It was created by the famous Canadian artist Louis-Philippe Hébert and was dedicated on September 2, 1909, 250 years after the arrival of the three hospital sisters. It is one of the first monuments in Canada honoring a real woman and one of the few statues of women. Her first statue, also by Hébert, is one of the statues in the Maisonneuve Monument, in Place d’Armes, dedicated on July 1, 1895. Near the statue is the Musée des Hospitallers, exhibiting a varied collection about the development of Montreal, Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal’s history, hospital care, medicine, and pharmacy. Read more...

A sitting bronze statue of Queen Victoria was created by her daughter, HRH Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll. Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the United Kingdom queen for 63 years and seven months, known as the Victorian era. The second longest-reigning British monarch. The statue was cast in 1900 from the Queen Victoria’s marble statue that stands in front of Kensington Palace in the United Kingdom since 1893, created for the fiftieth anniversary of Queen Victoria’s accession. The bronze statue was commissioned by Lord Strathcona, the founder of Royal Victoria College and a friend of Queen Victoria and her daughter. It stands on the stairs of the Strathcona Music Building. This building was the former building of the Royal Victoria College, which was built in 1884 by Strathcona for the higher education of Canadian women. It was Canada’s first residential college for women and was supervised by the British philosopher, educationalist, and author, Hilda D. Oakeley (1867–1950). Princess Louise was Queen Victoria’s sixth child. She was a sculptor, and an advocate of the arts, women’s equality, and the feminist movement. In 1871, she married her first husband, whom she chose. When he got nominated to the Governor-General of Canada in 1878, she assisted him with supporting the development of art and women’s equality and co-founded the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1880. She created several statues of Queen Victoria and other royal members. Some are still standing till these days. Read more...

On the west grounds of the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg stands a sculpture of Nellie McClung with her fellow Famous Five members – Henrietta Muir Edwards (1849-1931), Emily Murphy (1868-1933), Louise McKinney (1868-1931), and Irene Parlby (1868-1965). They are depicted in the middle of a meeting, around a table, signing a petition. Nellie McClung (1873-1951) was a social reformer, suffragist, women’s rights activist, and author. She founded and led many women’s organizations in Canada. When she lived in Winnipeg, she led the women’s suffrage campaign and won. In 1916, Manitoba became the first province in Canada to grant women their voting rights. On August 27th, 1927, the Famous Five started the first wave of feminism in Canada when they filed a petition to allow women to be senators. The Supreme Court ruled that women are not included in the word ‘persons’ in Section 24 of the British North America Act, 1867, and therefore cannot become senators. The Famous Five appealed to the highest court of appeal in the British Empire, and on October 18th, 1929, it overruled the Supreme Court decision and declared that women were “qualified persons.” The Nellie McClung Foundation, led by Manitoba politician Myrna Driedger, commissioned the statue to honor McClung’s activism work towards equal rights for Manitoba women and Canadian women in general. The sculpture was created by the sculptress Helen Granger Young and was dedicated on June 18th, 2010. There are two more statues of Nellie McClung in Manitou and Edmonton. The Famous Five were also honored with monuments on Parliament Hill and Olympic Plaza in Calgary. Read more...

In the heart of BME Freedom Park stands a bust of Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Her great, great niece, the Canadian artist Artis Lane sculptured it, and it was unveiled in 2009. Mary Ann Shadd (1823-1893) was born free to abolitionists and activist parents in Delaware. She became a teacher and taught black children in several cities before her family moved to Canada following the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In Canada, Shadd advocated for racial integration, founded an integrated school, and established “The Provincial Freeman” – the first anti-slavery newspaper. It made her the first female journalist in Canada and the first black female editor in North America. During the civil war, she returned to the US as a widow with two kids and served as a recruiting officer. After the war, she continued writing, advocating for equal rights for African American women, and even completed her law degree. Shadd’s bust stands on a marble pedestal, and the plaque tells her story and her great, great niece, Artis Lane. Lane was commissioned to create the statue but requested payment only for the materials. In 2009, Lane sculptured the bronze bust of Sojourner Truth in the US Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, DC, which was the first statue in the Capitol to represent an African-American woman. The BME Freedom Park project was the idea of Gwen Robinson and brought to life with the East Side Pride, who maintains it, the Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society, the municipality, Union Gas, and the Ridgetown Agricultural College. The park stands where the first British Methodist Episcopal Church in Canada stood. Ex-slaves and abolitionists founded the church in 1856, and it served as a safe space, activism hub, and community gathering place. A block away from the BME Freedom Park is the Chatham-Kent Black Historical Society & the Black Mecca Museum, which preserve, present, and celebrate Chatham-Kent’s rich Black history. Read more...

Emily Carr House is a museum and a cultural center that celebrates the life and work of Emily Carr (1871-1945), a famous Canadian painter and writer. Carr’s passion for art started at a young age, but only after her parents passed away, at 19, did she start studying art professionally. First in San Francisco, then London, and a few years later in Paris. She traveled across Canada for sketching and painting trips to Aboriginal villages, getting inspired by their culture and tradition, painting the indigenous artifacts and the wild nature of Canada. Still, even though she traveled around Canada, her home base was always Victoria, in a house close to her childhood home, which she called House of All Sorts. Over the years, recognition of her work grew, and she exhibited in the US and Europe. After several heart attacks and a severe stroke in her mid-sixties, she stopped painting and focused on writing. She passed away on March 2nd, 1945. The Carr house was built in 1863 by Emily’s father, in the center of 19th-century Victoria. Emily was born and grew up there with her nine siblings. The house was extensively restored to the 1860s, the years that Carr lived there with her family during her uprising. Although the furniture is not original, a visit to the house will give the experience of English life in Victoria during that period and feature Carr’s writings from her books – The Book of Small and The House of All Sorts. On display are original artifacts like the family bible, her belongings, and art. The museum hosts special events like art and gardening workshops, rotating exhibits, and guided tours of the house and its surroundings. Read more...