The First World War Veteran statue in front of the Former Bank of Montreal (335 Main Street) is set to be relocated to Brookside Cemetery (3001 Notre Dame Ave.) to make way for the reopening of Portage and Main.

The statue has stood on the iconic corner for over 100 years, honouring the 230 Bank of Montreal (BMO) employees who lost their lives serving in the First World War. The statue was erected in 1923 and was sculpted by American sculptor James Earle Fraser, whose submission won the bank’s international design competition. The statue itself is nine feet tall and is modelled after BMO employee and Military Cross Recipient Captain Wynn Bagnall.

The Manitoba Metis Federation (MMF), who took ownership of the former Bank of Montreal a few years ago, and agreed to gift the statue to the city only once they were certain that it would be relocated to a new home. As a recently designated National Historic Site, Brookside Cemetery is a very appropriate location.

Brookside Cemetery was established in 1878 and is one of the oldest garden cemeteries in Western Canada. After the First World War, a large portion of the cemetery became a military Field of Honour to serve as a burial place for those lost in the war. Today, there are more than 10,000 veterans buried in the historic cemetery.

We are grateful that the MMF pushed for the protection and sensitive relocation of the statue, as this news came to light only a few weeks after the City of Winnipeg’s needless destruction of the historic shards at Air Canada Window Park. If it had not been for the MMF’s influence, we fear this monument could have met a similar fate.

Sources:

“Brookside Cemetery” City of Winnipeg, Services & Programs, Cemeteries.

“Brookside Cemetery National Historic Site” Government of Canada, Parks Canada, National Historic Site Designations, 14 November 2023

“Media Advisory: BMO Bank of Montreal Celebrates 100th Anniversary of Historic Winnipeg Branch” BMO News Releases, 21 May 2013

Rollasen, Kevin. “Statue if First World War soldier to stand among Brookside veterans” The Winnipeg Free Press, 30 September 2024

Image:

Bank of Montreal War Monument at 335 Main Street (cropped) – November 2010 – Peter Vanderheyden from Vancouver, Canada (CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)