Photo credit: CDM P90-99 – Watershed Moments, Page 138
It has been a century since the official unveiling of the stone monument located on Mission Hill at the intersection of the Island Highway, Dingwall Road, and Back Road.
After the Great War, the community needed a symbol to mark the loss of their sons and a loss of innocence. In 1921, the newly formed Great War Veterans’ Association suggested a Celtic Cairn of rocks from the farms that each man had left behind. The work united the whole community in the common homage to all who had served.
The memorial was completed in 1922 and dedicated on November 12th by Colonel Warden, former commander of the 102nd Battalion that had trained at Goose Spit near Comox.
Further plaques honouring the fallen from the Second World War, Korean Conflict and Peacekeeping Services were added over time.
Veterans, other service personnel and the public gathered at the cairn for Remembrance Day ceremonies for decades until a more centrally located cenotaph was erected at City Hall in the late 1990s by Courtenay Legion Branch #17. This new cenotaph has since been moved to its current site in Jubilee Square.
