Victims of Communism memorial cost jumps to $4M
Don Butler, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: August 21, 2014, Last Updated: August 21, 2014 8:31 PM EDT
The federal government has quietly boosted its support for the planned Memorial to Victims of Communism in downtown Ottawa to about $4 million.
The revelation came as the government unveiled six final design concepts for the memorial, which will occupy a 5,000-square-metre site on Wellington Street between the Supreme Court and Library and Archives Canada. The winning design is expected to be announced in September.
The government announced a year ago that Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) would give Tribute to Liberty, the charity that proposed the memorial in 2008, $1.5 million over two years to help build the new landmark.
But Tribute to Liberty’s chair, Ludwig Klimkowski, said Thursday the government later “restructured” its contribution. “We actually gave them back that money,” he said.
Instead, three government departments — Citizenship and Immigration, Canadian Heritage and Public Works — signed a memorandum of understanding to collectively provide support worth about $4 million to the project, Klimkowski said.
Marisa Monnin, press secretary to Heritage Minister Shelly Glover, said that Canadian Heritage and CIC are both contributing $1.5 million to the project.
Public Works apparently contributed land but no money.
The federal government had not previously announced that its funding for the project has changed.
Klimkowski said Tribute to Liberty has raised $2 million so far, meaning the total amount available to the project is nearly $6 million.
Construction of the memorial is expected to cost about $3.7 million, Klimkowski said. The balance is a contingency fund to cover additional costs, with any residual money used as an endowment to create Canada’s first virtual museum of the victims of communism.
The government says the memorial will recognize Canada’s role in offering refuge to millions who fled communist regimes. It will also raise awareness of the “ravages of communist regimes and remind all of the core Canadian values that unite us,” it said this week in a news release.
The memorial has received support from all federal parties, who are no doubt cognizant of the fact that about eight million Canadians trace their roots to countries that lived or still live under communism.
Not surprisingly, the Conservatives have been particularly supportive. In May, Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave the keynote speech at a fundraiser for the memorial in Toronto.
In a blistering attack on the evils of communism, Harper said its “poisonous ideology and ruthless practices slowly bled into countries around the world.”
When the memorial was first proposed, the estimated cost was $1.5 million. Tribute to Liberty had hoped to raise the money privately but the federal government stepped in with its promise of $1.5 million when the charity struggled to raise enough.
Gregory Thomas, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, called the memorial “a great project” and said he has personally donated money to the cause.
“But it’s a slippery slope when the government gets involved with sponsoring these kinds of things,” he said. It would have been better, he said, if Tribute to Liberty “had just persevered and raised enough money to build it.”
“Heaven knows there are enough Canadians who fled oppression in Eastern Europe and Asia, and their descendants who’ve made a life in Canada, that contributing to this kind of monument should be doable,” Thomas said.
In April, the government announced the launch of a design competition for the memorial, inviting teams of artists, architects, landscape architects and other urban design professionals to submit their credentials and examples of previous work.
From that, a jury selected six teams and invited them to develop concepts. Those concepts were unveiled Thursday during a two-hour public viewing at the National Capital Commission headquarters on Elgin Street.
The concepts submitted by the finalists range from large-scale, monumental works to more understated, even pastoral, memorials.
One team, for example, proposes to create a forest on the site, with native tree species such as sugar maples, providing a metaphor to highlight the struggles and aspirations of those affected by communism and celebrate their contributions to Canada.
Another team proposes a “cemetery” with 100 million pixel-like memory squares — symbolizing the 100 million lives lost worldwide under communist regimes — covering the exterior of a series of ascending concrete triangles.
A selection jury will recommend the winning design to the government, which will make the final decision.
Klimkowski, a member of the jury, said it began its deliberations Thursday and will finish late Friday.
“Once we choose the front-runner and the runner-up, we’ll present this to the (government) stakeholders and they will pretty much follow our suggestions,” he said.
An announcement of the winning entry should come “sometime after Labour Day,” he said, with the unveiling of the monument by fall 2015.
Team Kapusta: Janusz Kapusta, artist (New York, USA); Voytek Gorczynski, architect (Toronto, Ontario); Andrzej Pawlik, architect (Mazowieckie, Poland)
Team Moskaliuk: Wiktor Moskaliuk, architect (Markham, Ontario); Larysa Kurylas, artist (Washington, D.C.); Roger Courtenay, landscape architect (Markham, Ontario)
Team Bartosik: Michal Maciej Bartosik, artist; Fung Lee, landscape architect; James Melvin, landscape architect (all from Toronto, Ontario)
Team North: Alissa North, landscape architect; Peter North, landscape architect; and Scott Eunson, artist (all from Toronto, Ontario)
Team Phillips' design. Christopher Phillips, landscape architect (Vancouver, British Columbia); Marc Boutin, architect (Calgary, Alberta); Krzysztof Wodiczko, artist (New York, USA)
Team PLANT: Lisa Rapoport, architect; Anna Passakas and Radoslaw Kudlinski of Blue Republic, artists; Eric Beck Rubin, historian (all from Toronto, Ontario)
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