Outside the Lines

About a week ago we marked 108 years since the Battle of Vimy Ridge in France during WWI (April 9 - 12, 1917) and it reminded me of a wonderful road trip that the Official Cookie Tester and I took to Ottawa last fall, just after Remembrance Day. We met up with friends for a special exhibit at The Canadian War Museum entitled Outside the Lines. This photo was taken in the Royal Canadian Legion Hall of Honour rotunda.

In addition to showcasing a spectacular maquette of our national war memorial that sits steps from Parliament Hill, it included this amazing hand embroidered quilt seen hanging to its left in the photo above.

I wasn't smart enough to snap a photo of the exhibit explanation, but it appears to be a quilt commemorating the four companies under the command of Colonel Kingsmill of the 123rd Overseas Battalion, 10th Royal Grenadiers. 

The names of every man in Companies A, B, C and D, and their commanding officers are meticulously stitched in red while the British bulldog waves the Union Jack. I cannot begin to conceive of how this was planned so that the maker fit everyone in.

Outside the Lines shone a light on two centuries of women’s art about war, beginning in the 1800s and finishing in 2024, and it was impressive. It included 70 diverse works. Only one was a quilt, which I will share, but I thought I'd also give you a glimpse of a few of my favourite pieces.

This painting was of women working in a munitions factory in Montreal and it was so very captivating. I didn't come close to capturing the incredible light in it, it was incredibly soft and warm. We spent a lot of time examining it.

I loved this painting but again, wasn't smart enough to capture any details about it.

And the same goes for this one. I will let them speak for themselves.

This painting spoke to the return of part of a family to Japan and the ultimate return of a few of the family members several decades later.

And here's the quilt that I mentioned. It recognizes one of the first black companies in the Canadian military, though I couldn't help but notice that their commander was white (top row) ...

It's interesting how the artist used camo fabric for the sashing to pull all of those photo transfers together.

Back to The Battle of Vimy Ridge. The Canadian National Vimy Memorial sits on a 250-acre portion of the former battleground in France, dedicated to the memory of Canadian Expeditionary Force members killed during the First World War. It also serves as the place of commemoration for 11,285 Canadian soldiers of the First World War killed or presumed dead in France who have no known grave. 

The War Museum is home to the maquettes of the 20 figures scattered throughout the memorial so we got to get an up close look at them during our visit as well. 

These plaster casts of the original sculpted clay statues were used as a reference tool for the Italian carvers who worked on the memorial and they are impressive.

The figures represent themes such as strength, sorrow, and peace. If you look closely at the maquette you can see where the figures are placed atop the columns and throughout the monument as a whole, giving you a sense of its incredible size. A visit here is on my bucket list....M