South African War Memorial

I'm Peter Vronsky, I'm a Canadian historian mostly focused on military history. What we're looking at is the South African War Memorial by the sculptor Walter Seymour Allward, one of Canada's leading sculptors of that era. This monument commemorates Canada's participation in the South African War or the Boer War, as it's sometimes known, which occurred between 1899 and 1902. Britain was attempting to re-conquer South Africa, Canada was asked to help the British.

This is quite a tall monument which is topped by the figure of Winged Victory, the universal symbol of victory. And here below we can see two soldiers flanking the figure of Britannia, which symbolizes, of course, the British Empire at that time. We can see them outfitted in typical turn of the century kitting for tropical warfare, for African warfare.

This soaring Winged Victory, the figure of Britannia surrounded by the common soldier ready to go to war for the British Empire, really symbolizes, that this moment, a rising national sense of self and our relation with the British Empire as a former colony, but as well as a new emerging nation. This is sometimes seen as Canada's emergence in the international world. Because there was a question of whether Canadian troops would be assigned to British units, the Canadians insisted that in South Africa Canadian troops would arrive there in their own formations. And here for the first time in South Africa, Canadian troops distinguish themselves.

Our national memorial, Remembrance Day, begins with the recognition of troops in South Africa. The South African War is usually the point at which we begin our Remembrance Day traditions. If we look around the edges of the monument we can see some of the battles in which the Canadian troops distinguished themselves. This was a very brutal and difficult war. Some 7,000 Canadians served in South Africa, 265 were killed in action or died from disease.

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