By 1921 initial plans were underway for a war memorial. In March, the Board of Trade called a meeting and invited all the people in town who had lost relatives in the Great war. It was decided to raise $7,500 by debenture and the rest would come from public subscription. In April of 1922, the War Memorial Committee decided that the location of the memorial would be the library grounds. The Lindsay Cenotaph was unveiled on November 11, 1922, and originally dedicated to the local war dead of the First World War. After the Second World War, a slab was added at ground level with the names of those lost in that war. One last name was added after the Korean War.
Sir Sam Hughes, Canada’s Minister of Militia and Defence from October 1911 to November 1916, had his name included among the fallen of the First World War on the Lindsay Cenotaph even though he did not die until 1921. Lindsay was his home town where he had been a school teacher and editor/owner of the newspaper.
Emmanuel Hahn's design represents the sorrows caused by war. The soldier atop the cenotaph looks down in sadness at the ground below him, as if he might find there, his fallen comrades, if not for the tragedy of war. The bronze statue depicts a young, grieving Canadian soldier in a winter greatcoat. His right hand and left forearm rest on his helmet which is placed on top of his reversed rifle and his helmet hangs from his left forearm.
Hahn moved to Toronto at the age of seven with his family of artists and musicians from Germany, in 1888. He studied commercial design and model-making at Toronto Technical School and Ontario College of Art and Industrial Design. At 25 years old Hahn began a nearly lifelong contract with Thomson Monument Company of Toronto. Two years later, he also started work as a studio assistant to sculptor Walter Seymour Allward. Part of his duties included assisting on Allward’s significant works such as the South African War Memorial in Toronto.
In 1912 Hahn began an association with the Thomson Monument Company of Toronto. It was there, along with several assistants, he made the many war memorials that are found across Canada: Fernie, British Columbia; Killarney and Russell, Manitoba; Alvinston, Bolton, Cornwall, Hanover, Lindsay, Malvern, Milton, Petrolia and Port Dalhousie, Ontario; Gaspe, Quebec; Moncton, New Brunswick; Springhill and Westville Nova Scotia; Summerside, Prince Edward Island.
Hahn is probably most famous as the designer of the Bluenose on the back of the Canadian dime and the Caribou on the back of the Canadian quarter. He was a victim of anti-German sentiment in the years following the Great War, when his design for the Winnipeg Cenotaph was rejected in 1925.
