Frances Loring might not be a name familiar to most Cambridge residents, but the war memorial she sculpted at Queen’s Square is likely known by all.
The Galt cenotaph was unveiled on November 10, 1930, just a dozen years following the end of the war, before a crowd of 10,000 people.
The scene that day, nearly a century ago, was similar to the October 1919 visit by Edward Prince of Wales, when boys climbed telegraph poles and sat atop nearby roofs around the railroad station to get a good view of the man who would be king.
On that November afternoon at Queen’s Square, people watched the 2:30 p.m. dedication of the cenotaph and the Garden of Remembrance from any vantage point they could find; they peered out from the steeple at Central Presbyterian Church, from the windows at Knox, from the roof of the YMCA and curling club, and from hilltop houses on the crescent.
The American-born Miss Loring, who was living in Toronto, had been awarded the contract to sculpt Galt’s memorial by the local committee tasked with seeing the project through to completion. Led by Dr. Harry MacKendrick, himself a veteran of the Great War, as was his son, the committee chose Loring’s design, with its massive central block sculpture which merged the heroic figure of “Victory” on one side with a mourning figure of ”Peace” on the other.
That central block of stone is supported at either end by two solid pylons on which are carved the 239 names of those whose sacrifice upheld Victory and made Peace possible.
The symbolic figure of "Victory," which stands leaning on the Sword of Sacrifice, looks off into the future: “To them all honour Guard ye their victory.” On the opposite side of the monument is the portrait of a woman who represents “Peace,” who mourns for the great sacrifice her sons have made so that Peace might endure. She leans with one hand on the shield, a symbol that through battle and sacrifice they have achieved peace. Her other hand offers the laurel branch that their sacrifice may be ever glorified.
“In Peace and Honour Rest you, my sons.”
At 2:30 that afternoon, the dedication ceremony started at 2:30 p.m. when "the stillness was broken by the deep tones of "O Canada" played by the combined Highland Light Infantry, Salvation Army and Galt Kiltie Bands.
Loring, recognized as one of Canada's leading sculptors at a time when the craft was dominated by men, was active from 1913 until her death in the winter of 1968. Her war memorial was unveiled at a time when memories of the war were fresh on everyone’s minds, and most regarded the war as the war that would end all wars.
Toronto’s Robert M. Gullett cut the stone for the sculpture under Loring's supervision, based on models she had created.
Frances Loring was one of Canada's best-known sculptors in the first half of the 20th century, though the profession was dominated by men.
The Canadian sculptor of American descent at work in this National Gallery of Canada photograph. Loring, notes the National Gallery, was instrumental in expanding the role of women in art. The artist studied sculpture in Munich, Geneva, and Paris before studying at the famed Art Institute of Chicago, and in Boston.
Loring and her partner, fellow sculptor Florence Wyle likely bid on the government commission for the Vimy Memorial which would be erected above the Douai Plain in France; Canada’s pre-eminent sculptor, Walter Allward, an acquaintance of the two women, won the commission.
National Gallery of Canada director Eric Brown was effusive in his praise for the two women sculptors, saying that the several examples of their work in then National Gallery were “among the most brilliant of the Canadian sculpture.” (Elspeth Cameron, And Beauty Answers: The Life of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, Cormorant Books, 2007).
In 1923 Loring and Wyle had unsuccessfully bid on the war memorial for Sault Ste. Marie, the only women among the eight who submitted designs in the competition, but lost out to Alfred Howell.
Nor had they won a bid for the 1922 war memorial in Ottawa, but Loring’s design was resubmitted in 1928 for the Galt War Memorial competition; her winning entry was the three-quarter round monumental relief of oversized figures Victory and Peace emerging dramatically from the massive central architectural wall or block.
That same year, 1928, when she won the Galt commission, she spent three months in Italy, where she completed a memorial in Carrara marble for the Great Library at Osgoode Hall, commissioned by the Law Society of Upper Canada.
Her seven-foot tall statue depicts a draped nude male, eyes upturned and arms extended with palms upward before a marble panel bearing the names of those from the Law Society who lost their lives in the Great War.
The unveiling ceremony on Armistice Day was a grand Toronto affair, wrote author Elspeth Cameron.
That same year she also completed The War Widow and The Recording Angel, both done in collaboration with architect and friend John Pearson for the Memorial Chamber of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.
Her partner Florence was working at the same time on an animal sculpture for Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College, where a young student by the name of John Kenneth Galbraith, destined one day to be an integral part of the John F. Kennedy administration, was in his second year of animal husbandry studies.
Cameron, in her book about Loring and Wyle, suggests that the line between architecture and sculpture was becoming blurred during the 1920s. True, Loring’s portrait bust of Dr. Frederick Banting was sculpture pure and simple, but such was not the case with the Galt war memorial. Even one of Loring’s plaques, the Mercer Memorial at the Toronto Armouries, showed that even though the sculptures dominated, they needed supporting structures around them.
Loring’s memorial was dedicated to Major General Malcolm Mercer, who was, incidentally, connected to Cambridge by way of artist Carl Ahrens. Ahrens lived and painted at his Big Trees home on Avenue Road in the 1920s; after Mercer’s death Ahrens was aided by another patron, Galt’s John Nobel MacKendrick. Mercer had been Ahrens’ biggest patron and supporter until his death in France in 1916, but MacKendrick was an able substitute.
Loring and Wyle were regular exhibitors at the bi-annual Allied Arts Association shows, and Loring’s models and photos for both the Osgoode Memorial and Galt’s War Memorial, were shown first there in Toronto.
As the 1960s opened, John R. Lewis, writing in the Star Weekly Magazine, said that despite Loring’s fame in Toronto and throughout Ontario, and “despite her years and the contributions she has made to Canadian art, (sheer) is probably the only major artist in the country whom practically nobody knows.”
He noted that although her work is seen daily in places like Galt, Toronto, Ottawa, St. Stephen, N.B., and Augusta, Maine, among other places, and that many thousands of people saw and heard Loring on TV and radio over the years, “the recognition is fleeting.”
“The best a good Canadian sculptor can hope for, said Loring, “is recognition by the small circle of art patrons and devotees who know and appreciate outstanding talent.”
Loring and other sculptors remain a non-entity to most Canadians, even though their work “feeds their souls with beauty and inspiration.” Still, a sculptor would be happy, she said, if he/she “can earn a bricklayer’s wages,” along the way. “This can be doubled in spades if the sculptor should happen to be a woman.”
This artwork depicting Galt's Cenotaph shows each of the more than 300 names that are inscribed on the memorial.
Frances Loring's timeless testament to art and architecture