What is the significance of the war memorial?

Canadian war memorials honour the about 118,000 Canadians who have died in military service since Confederation and structure the national observance of Remembrance Day on November 11. Memorials are found at the federal level (the National War Memorial in Ottawa, the Books of Remembrance in the Peace Tower's Memorial Chamber), at overseas battlefield sites, in every Canadian province and territory, and in nearly every Canadian community with a cenotaph in a town square or veterans' park. Together these memorials make remembrance one of the most distributed civic practices in Canadian life.

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial in France is the most significant Canadian battlefield monument abroad. Designed by Toronto architect Walter Allward, it was dedicated by King Edward VIII on July 26, 1936 on land permanently granted to Canada by France. The 27-metre twin pylons rise above Vimy Ridge, where the Canadian Corps captured the German position on April 9 to 12, 1917 in one of the defining Canadian engagements of the First World War. The monument's two figures of Mother Canada Mourning Her Fallen Sons face the battlefield. The Vimy Memorial inscriptions list the names of 11,285 Canadians killed in France in the First World War whose graves are unknown.

Other major overseas memorials include the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial in France (commemorating the Royal Newfoundland Regiment's 1916 destruction at the Battle of the Somme), the Canadian Memorial Window at Ypres in Belgium, the Juno Beach Centre at Courseulles-sur-Mer (the only Canadian D-Day museum, opened June 6, 2003), and the cemeteries at Bény-sur-Mer (Normandy), Holten (Netherlands), and Adegem (Belgium). Federal Books of Remembrance kept in the Memorial Chamber of the Peace Tower in Ottawa list the names of every Canadian killed in war service since 1867: the First World War book has 66,651 names, the Second World War book has 44,893, and other books cover Korea, peacekeeping, and the Afghanistan conflict. A page is turned in each book daily by ceremonial sentries.

Provincial and community memorials extend the practice across Canada. Every provincial legislative building has a war memorial. Toronto's Old City Hall cenotaph (1925), the Halifax Memorial (1967), the Manitoba Legislative Building cenotaph, and the Quebec City National Assembly memorial are examples. The Highway of Heroes (Highway 401 from CFB Trenton to the Toronto Forensic Sciences Centre, formally designated in 2007) marks the route along which fallen Canadian Armed Forces members were repatriated from Afghanistan. Pages of community-level cenotaphs and regimental memorials in churches, school playgrounds, and town squares complete the network. November 11, 1918 ended the First World War; Remembrance Day services at memorials across Canada include the recitation of 'In Flanders Fields' by Canadian John McCrae and the wearing of the remembrance poppy distributed by the Royal Canadian Legion.