Tony Trigiani believes the naysayers haven’t done enough research. That if they only made an effort to understand his project, they would stop ridiculing the 24-metre statue of a cloaked woman with her arms extended toward the sea, and see the beauty in his vision.

Trigiani, the Toronto businessman behind the Mother Canada war memorial that until recently was slated to be built on Cape Breton’s Cabot Trail, is not giving up on that vision. Not even after Parks Canada’s recent decision to withdraw its support from the project, which means Trigiani no longer has permission to build on the land in Green Cove, N.S., that he selected four years ago. The news, for Trigiani, was most unwelcome.

“Where do you want me to start?” he said a few days after the announcement that derailed his dream.

This was our third phone conversation in a few months. Each time we spoke, Trigiani resisted being interviewed for a profile. He wanted the focus to be on the memorial, not on him. “Because people could either like me or hate me,” he said. But each time, as the project seemed increasingly unlikely to move forward, Trigiani unloaded his frustrations and challenged the critics who were calling his statue “monstrous,” “grotesque” and “giga-kitsch.” He seemed genuinely hurt by the backlash.

Trigiani said unequivocally that he would not consider an alternative location, but that doesn’t mean he intends to scrap the project. Rather, he isn’t giving up on Green Cove.

“We’re not rolling over,” he told me.

In cancelling the project, Parks Canada said “too many key elements” remain outstanding, including a final design plan and funds available to Trigiani’s Never Forgotten National Memorial Foundation, which had set a fundraising goal of $25 million to support the development.

Trigiani criticized the federal agency for “backing up from an obligation” and said shifting to a private location outside the national park is out of the question because it would mean “admitting defeat” and abandoning his supporters in Ingonish, the community nearest to the uninhabited Green Cove vista Trigiani became enamoured with in 2011.

“Personally I have no interest in any other location except that one, because that’s the one that inspired me,” he said defiantly.

He wouldn’t elaborate on any plans. The foundation, he said, would soon release a statement.

That Trigiani still has his sights on Green Cove is a testament to his determination and stubbornness — characteristics that appear to have served him well in the business world, but may have compromised his well-intentioned goal. Those who worked closely with him during Mother Canada’s early days wonder if things could have been different had Trigiani not become so singularly focused on his beloved eight-storey statue, despite warnings that the towering figure could overshadow his dream and sink the project.

Giant statue as lightning rod

Tony Patrick Trigiani, 68, was born in the village of Roseto Valfortore in southern Italy in 1947. His father immigrated to Canada a few years after the Second World War, and 2-year-old Tony came over with his mother a year later. He was raised in Toronto with two younger siblings.

At 19, Trigiani began working full time in the meat packing industry to support his mother and sisters after his father died. By 36, he was running his own business. He is now the president of Norstar Corp., a national food packaging company based in Etobicoke.

Trigiani lives in a Mississauga home he purchased for $1.3 million a decade ago, and owns a second property in Huron County. He has used his wealth for good purpose, donating to the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto and the Juno Beach Memorial in France, and shipping goods to hospitals and orphanages in Africa.

His latest philanthropic mission began on a trip to Italy in 2009, when he happened upon the Moro River Canadian War Cemetery and stopped to pay his respects. The burial ground is set on the Adriatic coast, where rows of headstones mark the graves of 1,375 Canadian soldiers killed in the Second World War.

Trigiani was moved by one marker in particular: that of Pte. Ted Truskoski, 17, killed on April 19, 1944, in the Battle of Ortona, 65 years to the day before Trigiani stood at his grave. He later learned Truskoski is one of more than 100,000 Canadian soldiers and peacekeepers buried overseas, which inspired him to create a national memorial honouring those who never made it home.

In 2013, Parks Canada announced its support for the Mother Canada memorial and granted Trigiani’s foundation the authority to build in Green Cove, located within the Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

The project had big-name backers, including retired military officers, cabinet ministers and journalists such as CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge, who would withdraw after the memorial became a major news story. It also enjoyed support from local communities near Green Cove, where many residents hoped it would bring tourists and jobs to an area with a 25-per-cent unemployment rate. But it didn’t take long for the backlash to begin.

Critics objected to the privately backed project’s proposed location in a national park, which they argued was against Parks Canada’s mandate. They disapproved of the closed-door cabinet decision that approved the land use. They argued the design was out of step with the raw beauty of the coastline and could be detrimental to the environment.

They were suspicious of the claim that no public funds would be spent, and incensed after learning Parks Canada had granted the foundation $100,000 to build a website and conduct research.

Much of the negative commentary that emerged, however, was focused on the design and size of the statue, which was to be roughly eight storeys tall. “Mother Canada statue is hubristic, ugly and just plain wrong,” read one national newspaper headline.

The statue was derided as “outsized,” “monstrous,” “offensively tasteless,” “grotesque,” a “brutal megalith,” “giga-kitsch” and “Dollywood.” A searing national newspaper editorial said “the bigger-is-better approach to art is best left to Stalinist tyrants, theme-park entrepreneurs and insecure municipalities hoping to waylay bored drive-by tourists.”

The memorial even became a Twitter meme, with doctored photos featuring the statue towering over alternative locations such as the oilsands and Banff National Park.

Everyone wanted to know who designed the statue, but it remained unclear. The Never Forgotten National Memorial Foundation provided careful answers, explaining that a rendering artist was hired to draw an image based on the Canada Bereft monument at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in France.

But it turns out there was an unseen player guiding the drawing of Mother Canada, and he was not a designer.

The architect’s perspective

If not for the size and scope of the statue, would the backlash have been as vicious?

Patrick Morello, a Toronto landscape architect who worked with Trigiani in Mother Canada’s early days, doesn’t think so. His company, LANDinc, was hired by the foundation in 2011 to assist with site selection, concept development and project management.

Morello believed in Trigiani’s dream of a national memorial honouring soldiers and peacekeepers buried overseas, and he still does. But he says there was never supposed to be a giant statue. The original concept was modest and reflective. It was meant to be a platform that extended to the sea — experiential and interpretive, in the manner of modern memorials, rather than larger-than-life and sentimental.

The firm didn’t object when Trigiani first insisted on a statue, though Morello and his colleague Walter Kehm, a landscape architect who has studied war memorials around the world, tried to steer him toward something abstract. But the relationship began to unravel as the statue, under Trigiani’s direction, grew bigger and bigger.

Morello said no designer or artist was consulted when the statue was drawn. “It was Tony’s vision, and a rendering technician — a layperson — trying to interpret what Tony wanted. There was never a sculptor involved.” The outcome reflected the lack of professional design, Morello said. “It didn’t look nice. It didn’t look warm.”

Trigiani was so involved in the illustration that his tweak requests became comical, Morello said. Trigiani asked for a thumb adjustment when he thought her hand looked strange and a new veil when he believed her head covering looked like a hijab.

Trigiani wouldn’t comment on anything Morello said, except to chastise him for speaking out. “Very unprofessional, very opportunist, very childish,” Trigiani told me, before saying that if it had been up to Morello the memorial would have been “Madonna under a street light.” (Madonna the singer, he clarified.)

Morello also revealed that Green Cove was not on the original list of three Cape Breton locations — selected by Trigiani with help from advisers — that LANDinc evaluated for the project site. It was added later, when Trigiani’s preferred site, a few minutes by car from Green Cove, was deemed unfeasible.

When Green Cove joined the proposed location list, it came second in LANDinc’s ranking system, after the Fortress of Louisbourg, a national historic site 170 kilometres southeast of Ingonish. Louisbourg was more practical, but Trigiani preferred the beauty and isolation of Green Cove, so he had LANDinc create a second ranking system with “high priority” aesthetic designations, Morello said. He was determined to make Green Cove work.

LANDinc urged Trigiani to hold a design competition, invest in a business case to support the location and engage with local groups that may have concerns about the project. When they tried to press their concerns, Trigiani said they were wasting time on non-essential issues. Morello recognizes that Trigiani was in a tough place. He needed research to attract donors, but he needed funds to conduct research. However, LANDinc felt it was crucial the foundation not go public with its vision until the issues were resolved. Trigiani disagreed. “If he didn’t like what you were saying, he would dismiss you,” Morello said.

Trigiani was trying to raise $25 million to fund the initial phase of the memorial development. The foundation hasn’t commented on how successful its fundraising efforts were, but Morello said Trigiani invested a lot of his own money in the project.

Morello and colleagues made the decision to share their story after the federal government asked the firm to provide documents late last year in response to an access-to-information request, which was the first time Morello realized the public was in the dark about how the memorial came to be. “It’s a difficult position for us to be in,” Morello said of speaking about a former client.

LANDinc’s involvement with the foundation ended in 2012, a few months after they officially expressed concerns in a memo sent to Trigiani and Parks Canada, which warned that it would be risky to go public with the statue portrayed as a “resolved design element.” The architects recommended replacing the drawn figure with an outline, and holding a design competition.

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Figure statues “are often polarizing objects that can become lightning rods for public criticism,” LANDinc warned. “Criticism that can gain steam and even sink a project.”

‘What hurts the most’

Trigiani has a wheezy laugh and a tendency to explain his own jokes, lest anyone be insulted by his teasing. He sometimes speaks in stream-of-consciousness bursts, starting new thoughts in the middle of old ones and offering the occasional head-scratching analogy.

When I first spoke to him in late August, seven weeks before the federal election that would remove the political backers of his project from office, he was friendly, polite and apologetic for refusing to meet for an interview. He said goodbye repeatedly each time we spoke, but only hung up on me once.

“What hurts the most,” he told me in the first call, “is people think I’m gonna get rich selling Mother Canada underwear.”

This was after a string of news stories about the foundation filing for trademark protection on Mother Canada-branded souvenirs, including underwear. Trigiani said he had no plans to make or profit from Mother Canada merch; the patent was meant to prevent others from doing so.

He didn’t want to talk because of the approaching election. I tried again a few months later, as the Liberals weighed how to proceed on Mother Canada. Trigiani was hopeful, but still upset with coverage.

“Now artistically, do you have better taste than I do?” he asked.

Well, taste is subjective, I said.

“Exactly,” he said. “So for a newspaper to say it’s a monstrosity . . .”

He was talking about a Globe and Mail editorial. “To this day,” he continued, “I have not heard one positive remark from a number of papers.”

I asked if he wished he’d held a design competition.

“How much money do you have to spend?” he countered.

“If we are able to get the permission to build,” he continued, “and if we have the funds then a lot of things can be addressed. But what comes first, the chicken or the egg?”

I wanted to say that the design competition usually comes before the design, but he didn’t let me finish.

Trigiani knew I was born in Cape Breton, and he encouraged me to consider the economic benefits he claimed the project would bring to struggling communities.

“Do you realize what this would do, not just for Cape Breton but for the Maritimes?” he said. “ ’Cause nobody gets parachuted in and rocket-shipped out. They will work their way through … Why do supermarkets put the eggs and milk at the furthest part of the store?”

I could tell he believed in his heart the memorial would bring prosperity. But the foundation never produced evidence to bolster the claim of a tourism and employment boom many locals pinned their hopes on.

‘This is not Disneyland’

In our final call, three days after the Parks Canada announcement, Trigiani was in shock.

“People don’t realize that this is not Disneyland … this is a national memorial. This is about 120,000 individuals, or close to it, that are buried overseas. This is not Mickey Mouse.”

At least two newspapers had invoked Disney while slamming Mother Canada. I asked Trigiani if he worried that his vision didn’t come across as intended to the public.

“Why should I be worried?” he said. “You can only do so much … You can’t force people to be reasonable. Everybody has skewed ideas and unfortunately we’re easily manipulated now. Unfortunately I feel a lot of us are like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, we don’t have a heart and are looking for one.”

If the public reaction has been negative, I said, could the fault be in how it was presented?

“You just discussed how many fairies dance on the head of a pin,” he said.

There are people who believe it’s a dignified memorial. But a large and vocal group are in Camp Disneyland. Trigiani blamed journalists, arguing they hadn’t looked at the foundation’s elaborate presentation packages and instead “singled in on one item.” The giant statue. “Why is it ‘giant’?” he asked, when the word came up. “It’s two metres higher than the fiddle in Sydney Harbour. I haven’t heard anybody setting themselves on fire because of the fiddle.”

Convinced that critics didn’t see his vision, he wouldn’t accept that maybe they just didn’t like it.

“Contrary to popular belief I’m not in the business of doing national memorials,” he said. “I sell bags to put chickens in. And why don’t you respect that and everybody else? At this point maybe I got in further than I would have thought.”

The foundation had said in a statement that Mother Canada was a “victim of politics.” Trigiani told me he believed it was a victim of environmentalists. In another statement a few days after our final call, the foundation said it “remains committed” to a national memorial and hopes to work with the government on “how best we can still move ahead together with this project at Green Cove.”

Before Trigiani ended our chat, he urged me, again, to look beyond the imposing figure. “Just give a little bit of understanding … See if people can get away from their fixation on a statue and look at the overall beauty in the layering in the message.”

He sounded sad. I tried to ask if there is anything he would have done differently, but he hung up.