Forty Eighth Highlanders Regimental Memorial | Part 1

My name's Geordie Beale, I'm the Honorary Colonel of the 48th Hylanders of Canada, I served in the regiment and I'm a 3rd generation Hylander.  

This regimental memorial is square column of grey granite. The design was selected by Eric Haldenby to stand for the strength that he saw and experienced of the 15th Battalion of the 48th Hylanders during the First War. As I look at it, looking south I can see on the front is a Cross of Sacrifice, and further up is a tower right at the very top. It's intended to suggest a cathedral and on the very top, quite stark and simple, is a Scottish Crown. And you can see in the memorial that it's designed deliberately to strike emotions. It is stark. It is solemn.

As a citizen it's very evocative and emotional, but as a Hylander, and I'm quoting a former Hylander, "It makes me ten feet tall". We mean that, that when we hear the pipes or we see the Regimental Memorial, we have the spirit and the connection with every Hylander that existed.

The cross on the front, on the north side, is called a Cross of Sacrifice. And if you look at it carefully, it's a sword, upside down with its point to the ground. And indeed in religious ceremonies and in churches and in memorial ceremonies, weapons are always turned to the ground, in times of prayer and in times of commemoration. So this Cross of Sacrifice is there to represent those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and those who gave an equal sacrifice and returned home to create the Canada we know.

Want to hear more, check out part 2!

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