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The Never Forgotten Memorial Foundation (even the corporate name is witlessly redundant) implicitly proposes that the most appropriate way for Canadians to honour their war dead is by worshipping the rear end of a female giant

If someone proposed to build Mount Rushmore today, he would be denounced and abused, possibly assassinated. Having been built, the thing became a truth-revealing treasure, a commentary more penetrating than those of a hundred Tocquevilles or Henry Adamses. So maybe the right approach to Mother Canada is not to resist its tastelessness and its bizarre design. Maybe we should consider embracing it — happily guzzling its advocates’ nauseating blend of patriotic gore, maple syrup and marketing sauce.

Their plans, like Gutzon Borglum’s for Rushmore, are disclosing aspects of Canada we do not always acknowledge: our stunted historical consciousness, our infinite self-satisfaction, our childlike craving to be seen by the world. One notices, for example, that the behemoth Mommy Canada faces away from the disc on which visitors are meant to gather and genuflect. The Never Forgotten Memorial Foundation (even the corporate name is witlessly redundant) implicitly proposes that the most appropriate way for Canadians to honour their war dead is by worshipping the rear end of a female giant. Psychologically she has to face outward, putting on a pose for old Europe. Is it too late to add a backpack with a Maple Leaf patch?

The only defence for this piece of giga-kitsch is that mad, grandiose statuary can sometimes be successful and worthwhile

I sympathize with the local Cape Bretoners who want the Never Forgotten National Memorial to be built for the sake of economic stimulus. But the talk of an Our Glorious Dead Gift Shop and a Forever Grateful to Our Heroes Snack Bar undermines the professed solemnity of the project — and that is without inquiring whether the whole thing will work, as a stimulus program, or whether it is desirable on the assumption that it would.