By Scott Taylor
Last week the Kandahar Cenotaph was back in the news as it was reported that the Memorial Hall built to house it had suffered severe weather damage during the winter.
While the Department of National Defence states that the contents of the Cenotaph were unaffected, the estimated cost of the repairs to the Memorial Hall is $500,000.
The building has been closed since February and the repairs are not expected to be complete before December.
The origins of this cenotaph date back to 2006 when Canadian troops based at the Kandahar airfield assembled a collection of commemorative plaques dedicated to each soldier killed in Afghanistan up to that date.
As the unwinnable war dragged on the cenotaph continued to grow with each new death. By the time Canada concluded the combat phase of the Afghanistan mission and withdrew from Kandahar the memorial site included a total of 161 plaques.
Of this total 158 were fallen soldiers plus diplomat Glyn Berry, Calgary Herald Journalist Michelle Lang and a civilian under DND contract Marc Cyr.
It was a unique and authentic memorial collection, made in the field by soldiers honouring their own comrades. As such the decision was made to pack and crate the cenotaph and bring it home to Canadian soil. That part was simple but once it was back in Ottawa the military faced a real head-scratcher as to what to do with it.
Finding a suitable location in the national capital was particularly challenging as all such zoning decisions involve multiple levels of government bureaucracy.
It also represents the sacrifice made in Canada’s first military defeat. It is a visual reminder that NATO, the world’s most sophisticated and powerful military alliance, failed to subdue the primitive but fanatical Afghan insurgents.
Canada cut its losses completely when we withdrew from the training mission to Afghanistan in 2014, and that occasion was marked with a ‘Day of Honour’ on Parliament Hill rather than a ‘Victory Parade’.
That said, it is important to remember our soldiers’ sacrifice even if it was in vain. Those men and women died in the service of Canada.
To kickstart the stalled relocation process, the decision was eventually taken to cut through the Gordian’s knot of red tape involving outside departments and simply place the Kandahar Cenotaph inside the DND Headquarters building known as the Carling Campus.
Construction on the new memorial hall started in 2017 in a project valued at $3 million. The hall was ready in 2019.
To mark the occasion a dedication ceremony involving a handful of military brass and DND personnel was held at the Carling Campus site. A few days later DND Public Affairs posted announcements and photos of the dedication.
Within hours the feces was hitting the fan right across the country as the families of the fallen realized they had not been invited to honour their loved ones.
The backlash forced a hasty retreat, promises to find the culprits responsible for the oversight and pledges to set things right. To their credit, DND did organize a blockbuster event in August 2019 to ‘re-dedicate’ the Kandahar Cenotaph and this time it included up to six family members of each of the fallen.
However, as this latest story of weather damage serves to remind us, this tribute to Canadian sacrifice in Afghanistan remains in a non-public space. The Carling Campus is a functioning military headquarters, which by its very nature requires a high level of security rather than open accessibility.
At present, when it eventually re-opens, the policy is that visitors can make appointments to view the cenotaph at this rather remote location in western Ottawa.
This is an unworkable half-measure which can easily be rectified. Rather than spend the $500,000 in repairs to the memorial hall, the Cenotaph should be relocated to Beechwood Cemetery.
It is after all the National Memorial Center. Beechwood is just outside the downtown core and it is publicly accessible.
There were even discussions on getting a Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) as a centrepiece for what could be a truly fitting tribute to those who paid the ultimate price in the service of Canada.
