Editor:
On Labour Day, CBC Radio News for the Maritimes carried a story about wreaths damaged at the cenotaph in Bedford, N.S. The man who tried to repair the damage felt a duty to honour those lives given in the cause of freedom.
I wonder, where is the news coverage of the pending destruction of a war memorial at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., one which honours a number of Islanders.
The historic Memorial Library, built largely with funds contributed by families and friends of the 73 Allisonians who fell in The Great War, was dedicated in 1927. Mt. A's administration wants it demolished to build a new building. Architectural plans to incorporate Memorial Library into the new structure have so far been rejected.
Six men and one woman from Prince Edward Island are among the 73 whose sacrifice in the First World War is remembered in Memorial Library. More were added after the Second World War.
In August, New Brunswick's minister responsible for heritage withdrew his intention to designate Memorial Library as a special heritage place. The university is now free to tear it down, and is seeking bids for the demolition. Time is running out to save the historic structure in some way, to incorporate this memorial into the continued life of the university.
Three generations after their deaths, there may not be a soul alive who knew William Earl Davison, Indian River; John Manuel Hensley, Summerside; Frank Major Hughes, Charlottetown; John Earle Lockerby, Hamilton; George Tennyson Metherall, Fortune Cove; Richard Westaway Poole, Montague; and Nurse Rena MacLean, Souris. MacLean died when a U-boat torpedoed her hospital ship, then rammed and machine-gunned the survivors in lifeboats. But everyone of us owes them our remembrance. Those who knew them and loved them, and went to school, to work, to war with them made their own sacrifices so this woman and these men would be remembered long after the donors were gone, too.
Desecrating a cenotaph is vandalism, a criminal offence of mischief. What is it called when a university deliberately chooses to demolish a war memorial?
Pam Reardon,
Yarmouth, N.S.,
Mount Allison Class of 1978
